He found me doing homework at the kitchen table, the same table where he’d once refused to let me quit on algebra.
“I want to do it,” he said, setting a pen down next to the papers I’d almost forgotten were still sitting in a drawer. “I wanted to be sure it was for the right reasons. Not just because your father made a scene in the driveway.”
“What made you sure?”
“You,” he said simply. “Every ordinary Tuesday since then. You didn’t need me to sign anything to keep showing up like this was already your family. I figured I owed you the same certainty, on paper this time.”
He signed it right there at the kitchen table, the pen scratching against the paper in a silence that felt bigger than the room around it.
He set the pen down afterward, staring at his own signature for a long moment like he was double-checking it was real.
