For the first time since my mother died, the money felt safe.
Gregory called while I was signing the last page.
“They executed the warrant,” he said. “They recovered packaging. They recovered a shipping receipt. Toxicology is confirming contamination. Child Services is filing emergency removal. Brandon cannot go back to that house.”
My chest tightened. “So he comes with me.”
“Yes,” Gregory said. “If you sign the guardianship paperwork today.”
“I already did,” I told him.
That evening, drizzle spitting cold across the parking lot, I pulled up to the discharge entrance at Nationwide Children’s.
A nurse wheeled Brandon out. He had a backpack slung over one shoulder and a hospital bracelet still circling his wrist. He looked smaller than he did in the ICU, not because he had shrunk, but because fear made children fold inward.
His eyes scanned the driveway like he expected another trick.
When he saw me step out of the car, his mouth parted. “You came,” he whispered.
“Of course I came,” I said, and I opened the passenger door like it was a promise. “Get in. You are coming home with me.”
He hesitated for a second, then climbed in quickly and shut the door as if someone might yank it open and take him back.
We drove in silence at first.
Halfway down 315, he finally spoke. “Evelyn kept saying if we did not behave, we would end up in a group home,” he said quietly. “She said bunk beds and nobody who cared.”
Something sharp twisted in my chest.
“They do not get to decide where you end up anymore,” I said. “And group homes are full of kids who deserved better than what they got. You deserved better too. You are with me now.”
He did not answer, but I saw his shoulders drop slightly. Like his body believed me just enough to stop bracing for the next hit.
My apartment was small, and I said that out loud before he could.
“It is small,” I told him. “The Wi-Fi is good. The neighbors fight only occasionally. I made up the bed in the second room.”
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