Chapter 3: The Paper Trail
I took the letter from Lily's hand and read it standing in her doorway.
It was from the county foster care office.
Formal language, reference numbers, a caseworker's name I didn't recognize.
The phrase "temporary placement review" appeared twice.
So did the words "household suitability reassessment." So did a date — three weeks from now.
"Where did you get this?" I asked.
"It was under my door," Lily said.
"When I came upstairs."
I read it again.
Someone had requested the review.
The letter didn't say who.
It didn't have to.
"Go to bed," I said.
"I'll handle this."
"Is it bad?"
I folded the letter.
"No.
Go to sleep."
She looked at me the way she always does when she doesn't believe me but doesn't want to argue — a small, careful look, like she's storing it away for later.
Then she nodded and closed the door.
I walked back down the hallway.
Tara was no longer in the kitchen.
She was sitting in the living room with her phone in her lap, and she didn't look up when I came in.
I set the letter on the coffee table in front of her.
"Did you request this review?"
She glanced at it.
"I spoke to someone at the agency, yes."
"You spoke to someone." I sat down across from her.
"What exactly did you tell them?"
"The truth." She set her phone down.
"That the placement has been difficult.
That there are concerns about long-term stability."
"Whose concerns?
Yours?"
"Mine.
And others."
"What others?
Tara, she's been here two years.
She's in school.
She has friends.
She calls me her father."
"She calls you her father because she has no one else." Tara's voice was flat, precise.
"That's not a family, Marcus.
That's a dependency."
I stared at her.
"She's eleven years old."
"I know how old she is."
"Then you know what happens if this review goes badly.
She goes back into the system.
She gets moved again.
Do you understand what that does to a child?"
Tara picked her phone back up.
"I understand that you made a decision that affects this entire household without consulting me.
I'm simply making sure the right people are aware of the full picture."
"The full picture." I stood up.
"The full picture is that you took her dinner plate tonight because you wanted her to feel like she didn't belong here."
"I took her plate," Tara said, "because someone in this house needed to be honest with her."
"About what?"
She looked up then.
Really looked at me, for the first time all evening.
"About the fact that you haven't filed the adoption paperwork, Marcus.
It's been fourteen months.
You keep saying you will.
You haven't." She paused.
"So either you file it, or stop letting that child believe something that isn't true yet."
The room went quiet.
I didn't have an answer for that.
Not because she was right.
But because the part of it that was true was the part I'd been avoiding for a long time.
I went to my office, closed the door, and found the folder I'd been moving from drawer to drawer for over a year.
The adoption paperwork.
Mostly filled out.
Never submitted.
My phone buzzed.
A text from a number I didn't recognize.
*Mr.
Hale.
My name is Donna Reyes.
I'm the caseworker assigned to Lily's review.
May you like
I'd like to speak with you before the formal assessment.
There are things about this request you should know.*
