She looked up at me.

“Always were.”

She turned back toward the window, but not before I saw the tears forming.

I drove the rest of the way with one hand on the wheel and the other resting where she could reach it.

In the months that followed, Skyla settled into my home in Decatur the way children do when safety becomes predictable. She had her own room, her drawings on the walls, her books on a shelf she chose herself. She talked more. Laughed more.

A little girl who had been left behind was beginning to take up space as if she had a right to it — which, of course, she always had.

Her first birthday in my home was simple.

We went to a small park, had cake, and walked a trail through the woods behind the house. Nothing extravagant. Everything she needed.

At the end of the day, she sat beside me on the porch steps in the evening light and said quietly: “Grandpa, I’m really glad I’m with you.”

I held her close and said nothing, because there was nothing better to add.

That’s what it comes down to in the end.

Not the filings, not the evidence, not the court orders — though all of those mattered.

What it comes down to is what you are willing to show up for, consistently, when someone small is counting on you to be there in the morning.

Skyla had her home and she was literally loved by a real family.

And in the end, that was the only thing that mattered.

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