Good Morning
It's been a year now.
Colette's trial ended in a plea deal that kept Piper off the witness stand entirely — twelve years, with the possibility of parole after eight, a number our lawyer called "about as good as these cases usually get," which I've decided to hold onto as a genuine kind of good news rather than resent as an incomplete one.
Piper is seven now. She still sees Dr. Lawson, though it's down to once a month, mostly check-ins these days rather than active work. She still doesn't love oatmeal, and nobody in this family has ever once suggested she has to eat it if she doesn't want to.
Trevor changed jobs that spring — a role with far less travel, a real pay cut he says he's never regretted for a single day. When he does have to be away, Piper stays with me, in my house, in the room we've slowly turned into hers, with a nightlight and a shelf of books and absolutely no camera anywhere in it, because we agreed, all three of us, that this house never needed one to prove it was safe.
I still open that same app most mornings, out of habit more than worry now — the one still installed at Trevor's front door, the one that started all of this. Some habits don't fully let go of you, even after the reason for them is gone.
This morning, the feed loaded to Piper at the kitchen table, swinging her feet under her chair, telling her father an elaborate story about a dream involving a dragon and, inexplicably, her second-grade teacher.
She caught sight of the little camera light blinking on the counter, and waved at it, the way she'd started doing months ago once she understood, fully and finally, that the camera in this house was never the thing to be afraid of.
"Morning, Grandma," she said, straight into the lens, grinning around a mouthful of cereal that had, gloriously, ordinary, nothing to do with raisins at all.
I waved back at a screen she couldn't see, in a kitchen eleven minutes away, and for the first time in a year, the feed loading up on my phone in the morning felt exactly like what it was always supposed to be.
Just a good morning.