Thanksgiving was quiet — just the three of us at the table, eating store-bought pie. Grace wore fuzzy socks and kept her new room key on a silver chain around her neck.

Not because she was afraid of us. Because it was a tangible reminder that her boundaries were finally real.

Eric started intensive therapy in December. He had decades of programmed subservience to unlearn, and it wasn’t easy; some days were tense with the growing pains of a man learning to speak his own mind.

But in January he wrote Grace a letter — not demanding forgiveness, just a pure, unvarnished admission of his failures as a father and a promise of who he was trying to become.

Grace kept it in her top desk drawer.

By spring, Richard and Patricia’s custody bid failed spectacularly, thanks in part to Avery’s address change. Avery moved to New Hampshire with her Aunt Sarah.