Chapter 32
Chapter Thirty-Two
Jack
The caseworker's name was Sandra. She had the energy of someone who had seen every version of this wreckage and was still genuinely rooting for the survivors.
She came on Monday after school pickup. I’d told Lily someone was coming to check in—kept it simple—and Lily had just nodded and gone back to her drawing. To a kid who’d lost everything in a night, a lady with a clipboard was probably the least remarkable thing to happen all month.
Sandra spent ten minutes with Lily first. I stayed in the kitchen and found things to do that weren't listening, though I heard Lily’s voice a few times—brief, matter-of-fact.
When Lily came through to get a glass of water, she looked at me and said, "She’s nice," in the tone of a professional restaurant critic, then disappeared back into the living room.
Sandra walked through the house with a different kind of attention than Phelps had shown.
She didn’t just look at the smoke detectors; she looked at the drawings taped to the walls and the way Gerald was propped on Lily's pillow. She checked the fridge, then the homework folder on the counter where I’d already signed the permission slip for the zoo trip.
She sat down at the kitchen table and uncapped her pen. "How’s she sleeping?"
"Better than the first week. She still wakes up sometimes. I hear her moving around." I paused. "I check on her."
Sandra nodded. "And eating?"
"Getting there. She has her preferences." I thought of the dry cereal, the specific way she lined up her apple slices. "I know what they are now."
She wrote something else. "School?"
"Mrs. Alvarez says she's engaged. Quiet, but engaged." I looked at the table. "She doesn't talk about it much at home. The school stuff. But she shows me things sometimes. A drawing, something she made. Like she wants me to know without having to explain the day."
Sandra looked up from her notes. "That's actually a really good sign. That she's showing you things."
I nodded, though I wasn't sure why it felt like a win.
She closed her folder. "I'm going to be honest with you, Mr. Henley.
When I picked up this case I had questions.
The background, the lack of contact, all of it.
" She said it without apology, which I respected.
"I still have some. That's just the nature of a thirty day review… we're looking at a snapshot."
"I understand."
"But." She put her pen down. "What I see here is a man who got on a plane the same night he got the call.
Who sorted housing and employment inside two weeks and shows up at school pickup every single day.
" She paused. "And a little girl who is grieving, which she will be for a long time, but who is also eating and sleeping and going to school and showing her uncle her drawings. "
The kitchen felt very still.
"I'm recommending the guardianship proceed to formalisation," she said. "You'll hear from Phelps by end of week. After that it goes to the courts, which is mostly paperwork and a hearing. Four to six months, give or take."
"Thank you," I said. My voice sounded thicker than I wanted it to.
She stood, picked up her folder. Then she paused at the door. "One more thing." She looked at me steadily. "Keep doing what you're doing," she said. "Don't overthink it."
She let herself out.
I sat at the kitchen table for a long time after the sound of her car faded. Through the doorway, I could hear the rhythmic, quiet scratch of Lily’s pencil.
I got up and went to see what she was working on.