“Not yet,” Natalie tells her.
Daisy looks personally betrayed.
Natalie grabs her coat. No hesitation now. No wobble.
We walk to our cars in parallel.
It feels absurdly adult.
***
My house looks exactly the same when we pull up.
That’s the strange part.
I half expected it to feel different.
Like the air would shift. Like the porch light would flicker. Like the universe would mark the moment I'm about to change my daughter’s life.
But it’s just the same siding. Same porch swing. Same dent in the garage door from when Maddie learned to ride her scooter.
Nothing announces what we’re about to do.
It’s just… Tuesday.
Inside, Maddie is cross-legged on the floor, building something precarious out of magnetic tiles.
She looks up.
“Natalie!”
She scrambles up so fast the tiles collapse.
“Hi, superstar,” Natalie says, crouching just enough to catch her before she launches.
Maddie hugs her like she just spotted her best friend.
I clear my throat.
“Hey, kiddo. We need to talk about something important.”
Her eyes widen immediately.
“Am I in trouble?”
“No.”
She squints at us. “Is this about the time I fed Daisy popcorn?”
Natalie glances at me. “You fed Daisy popcorn?”
“It was one piece.”
I rub my forehead. “We’ll circle back.”
Maddie flops onto the couch dramatically. “Okay. What is it?”
I sit beside her. Natalie takes the other side.
