Jonathan answered when no one else did. “She told me there was an informal family arrangement. No legal transfer.”
My stomach tightened.
“There was a paper,” I said. “Mom and Dad had me sign something when Simon was six months old. They said it let me take him to doctors.”
“It did,” Mom whispered.
“But?”
No one answered.
The sun suddenly felt too hot.
“But what?”
Dad rubbed a hand over his face. “It was temporary guardianship.”
My heart began pounding.
“Temporary?”
Mom’s eyes filled. “We thought Denise would come back sooner.”
I almost laughed, but it would have sounded broken. “You let me build nineteen years on temporary?”
Denise crossed her arms. “I never gave up my rights.”
The sentence was quiet.
It was also a door opening beneath my feet.
Jonathan stepped back from her as though seeing a stranger take shape.
“You said Joanna took advantage of your depression,” he said.
“I was depressed,” Denise snapped.
“I’m not questioning that. I’m questioning everything else.”
I should have felt vindicated.
Instead, I felt sick.
Because Simon was eighteen now. Almost nineteen. Maybe the papers no longer mattered legally in the way they once had. But emotionally, they mattered more than Denise understood. They meant my parents had watched me live in constant devotion while leaving a thread tied around Simon’s life, one Denise could pull whenever she pleased.