SIENNA'S POV
Rosa arrived at eight fifteen and Catherine assessed her for approximately forty five seconds before deciding she was acceptable.
This was Catherine's little process. She applied it to everything and everyone with the same focused seriousness, the brief evaluative pause, and then accepted or rejected with complete conviction and no interest in revisiting the decision. At five months old she had already developed the kind of certainty most adults spent decades trying to locate.
I, on the other hand, spent twenty minutes saying goodbye.
I kept finding reasons to stay. Catherine's extra blanket was in the bag but Rosa should know where. The formula was measured already but the second batch would need mixing at a specific ratio. Catherine had been a little fussy around three i
