Sophia asked. Yes, he said simply. She's my whole world, and she's slowly becoming her own world. That's terrifying. It means you raised her right, Sophia said.
He looked at her. "Yeah," he said. "Maybe." It was 3 weeks later on a Saturday in late December that the second twist arrived. Sandra called at 8:00 in the morning, which was not her style.
Sandra communicated through email and scheduled calls, not Saturday morning phone calls. James was in the kitchen. Sophia was still in the hallway with Noah when she answered, and he watched her face from across the kitchen do something he had not seen it do before. Go completely utterly blank. She said yes three times in response to things Sandra said.
She said okay once she said very quietly. Thank you Sandra and hung up. James put down his coffee. What happened? Sophia looked at him.
David withdrew. She said the kitchen was quiet with withdrew his claim. She said all of it. Full withdrawal. No conditions.
Sandra says his attorney submitted it yesterday afternoon. He's stepping away. James looked at her. Why? Sandra thinks the tracking documentation scared him more than he anticipated.
There was an element of his professional life that would have been complicated by a public legal case. Sophia's voice was very controlled. He has a reputation in his industry. He couldn't afford the exposure. So, it was never about Noah, James said.
I don't think it was ever about Noah, she said. The room was very still. Then something moved in Sophia's face. Something that had been held rigidly in place for months, maybe longer, broke its mooring and came loose. She sat down on the kitchen floor, not collapsed, not dramatically, just sat down the way people sit down when their legs have decided that standing is optional.
James came around the counter and sat down on the floor beside her. Not touching, just present next to her. Noah, who was in Sophia's arms, looked at the floor and then at James and then at the floor again, as if assessing whether sitting on floors was a thing people did and whether he wanted to join in. "It's over," Sophia said, like she was testing whether the sentence was real. "It's over," James confirmed.