Chapter 21 - Paige comes home
Paige completed residential treatment.
Then intensive outpatient care.
Recovery was not declared complete.
No judge said:
Congratulations, addiction over.
Nora remained with Marlene and David.
Paige received increasing parenting time.
Supervised.
Then unsupervised days.
Then weekends.
There were setbacks.
Not relapse.
A missed therapy appointment.
A late school pickup.
A panic attack after Nora asked:
“Are you going away again?”
Paige called her sponsor.
Called the therapist.
Did not disappear.
That mattered.
Eleven months after Nora was found, family court approved trial reunification.
Nora returned to Paige.
With monitoring.
Marlene remained involved.
No dramatic goodbye.
Nora slept at Marlene’s some weekends because she wanted to.
Family expanded rather than transferred ownership.
When Paige told me the court order was final, I said:
“Congratulations.”
She answered:
“Don’t congratulate me yet.”
Fair.
Then:
“Ask me in five years.”
Recovery thinks longer than celebrations.
Three years later, she would still be sober.
But we did not know that then.
We knew only the next week.
May you like
That was enough.
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