“Daddy,” Ivy said, uncertain now, “why are you crying?”

I had not realized I was.

Rose walked toward me slowly. “Do you need a hug injection too?”

I fell to my knees before they reached me.

“Yes,” I whispered. “I do.”

They came into my arms, both of them, warm and real and alive. For months I had imagined their voices so often that hearing them felt almost unbearable. Ivy smelled like baby shampoo and crayons. Rose pressed her cheek against my collar and patted my shoulder the way Celeste used to pat theirs when they cried.

Marisol stood back, wiping her eyes with the heel of her hand.

That night, the mansion breathed again.

We ate tomato soup and grilled cheese in the kitchen instead of the formal dining room. Ivy told me the soup was “too orange.” Rose asked if the moon still had a mother. I answered badly, but they listened. Marisol stayed only because the girls begged her to help “the patient Daddy” recover.

For the first time since Celeste died, I heard laughter under my roof and did not feel guilty for it.

I called Dr. Cross immediately.

“They’re talking,” I said, pacing the hallway, my voice breaking. “They’re laughing. Marisol helped them.”

There was a pause.

Not surprise.

Not joy.

A cold, measured silence.

“Adrian,” Dr. Cross said at last, “you need to be very careful. Sudden attachment to an unqualified caregiver can create unstable emotional dependence. That kind of recovery is not normal.”

I looked toward the kitchen, where Rose was giggling because Marisol had burned the corner of a sandwich.

“It feels normal,” I said.

“That is exactly why it is dangerous,” she replied.

By morning, she arrived with a folder.

Newspaper clippings. Hospital reports. A licensing complaint. A dead child’s name printed beside Marisol’s like a stain that could never be washed out.

“Negligent nurse,” Dr. Cross said softly. “A patient died under her care. I know you’re grateful right now, but gratitude can make parents blind.”

The words found the rawest part of me.

My daughters had already lost their mother.

The thought that I had allowed someone dangerous near them turned my fear into anger.

I confronted Marisol in the laundry room while she was folding the girls’ pajamas.

She went pale the moment she saw the folder.

“I can explain,” she said.

I did not let her.

That is the part I still hate myself for.

I had ignored the way my daughters smiled at her. Ignored the warmth she had brought back. Ignored the simple truth that love had done what machines could not.

I listened to the woman in the white coat.

And I fired the woman on the floor.

PART FIVE — The Silence That Returned

The silence came back before Marisol’s suitcase left the gate.

Ivy stopped speaking first.

Rose lasted until bedtime.

When I asked if she wanted water, she looked at the door and whispered one word.

“Marisol?”

I did not answer quickly enough.

Her face closed.

By the next morning, both girls had stopped eating. They sat beneath the piano again, holding the same stuffed rabbit between them. The toy stethoscopes lay abandoned on the rug, one of them cracked where someone had stepped on it.

Dr. Cross arrived by noon.

“We expected regression,” she said, as if she had been waiting for it. “This confirms my concern. The attachment was unhealthy. We need more aggressive intervention immediately.”

She placed a consent form on my desk.

Medication. Sedation-assisted therapy. Extended inpatient observation.

The words blurred.

I almost signed.

Then I saw, at the bottom of the stairs, Rose watching me through the railing. Her eyes were fixed not on the paper, but on my hand holding the pen.

She looked terrified.

Not sick.

Terrified.

I put the pen down.

That night, I went to the security room and watched the footage from the weeks before. I watched Marisol sit on the floor, not above my daughters. I watched her push away a therapy machine when Ivy covered her ears. I watched Dr. Cross enter rooms where the girls immediately stiffened. I watched her speak sharply to Marisol when she thought no one was listening.

“They need treatment, not lullabies,” Dr. Cross said on one recording.