back.

“I still like it.”

“Me too.”

After the show they went home to the house with the backyard.

Ruth had the evening off.

Tomás made grilled cheese sandwiches badly enough that the first batch burned.

Santiago laughed.

Alma declared the second batch perfect because it had “extra crunch.” They ate at the kitchen table while the late sun turned the windows gold.

Halfway through dinner, Santiago looked up and asked the question he had not asked in months.

“Daddy, are we staying here for real?”

Tomás set down his glass.

He looked at his son, then at his daughter with cheese on her cheek, then around the kitchen that no longer felt temporary.

“For real,” he said.

“This is home.”

Santiago nodded once, satisfied in the way children are when an answer finally lands in the place fear used to live.

That night, after baths and books and one extra glass of water and one debate about whether stuffed giraffes need blankets, Tomás stood in the hallway between their rooms and listened.

No crying.

No frightened footsteps.

Just the ordinary quiet of children sleeping safely.

He leaned against the wall and let the silence settle over him.

A year earlier, he had measured success in square footage, contracts, and headlines.

Now he measured it in smaller, truer things: a lunch packed before sunrise, a fever caught early, a school form signed on time, a promise kept because he was actually there to keep it.

Leticia still saw the children under supervision.

Some visits went well.

Some ended with hard questions and tears.

Recovery was not a straight line for any of them.

But the line that mattered most had been drawn clearly at last.

The children were safe.

They were fed.

They were wanted.

And on the night he tucked the blanket around Alma and watched Santiago drift off with one arm flung over his head, Tomás understood that the promise he had made in the car on the way to the hospital had become the truest thing he had ever said.

He was here.

He had them.

And he was not leaving.