"Dorothy, let me help."
She laughed, a small sound that caught at the edge of the door. Her left hand closed on my arm and she leaned on me like I was steady concrete.
"Big sister," a kid shouted from the garden. "Finley's back!"
"Someone rescued the cookies," another voice added, already running toward us.
"Don't tumble, Milo," I said and felt the weight of thirty tiny hands on my jacket as the kids swarmed. They climbed my legs, hugged my waist, shouted my old nicknames. I answered every shout because names mattered here.
Dorothy moved slow, step by step, but steady. Her ankle had wrapped cloth and bruises from a fall the week before. She kept saying it was fine. She always said that when something small wanted to turn into something big.
"Sit, sit," she told me when we reached the small entryway with the chipped bell. "You look like you've been through a storm."
"I quit," I blurted before I could polish the sentence. The kids went quiet for half a second like someone had paused a game.
Dorothy's fingers found my shoulder. "Quitting what?"
"The office. The internship. I turned in the mockups yesterday. I told them I couldn't keep drawing corporate smiles for people who didn't mean them."
"Oh," she said, and then the small smile that meant she approved. "Good. You draw better when you draw for people who need it."
"Which is you," I said. I meant
