Chapter 8

The adoption was finalized on a Tuesday in September, eight months after the flood.

The courtroom was small and bright, with wooden benches and a judge who looked like she'd done this a thousand times. Dean wore his best shirt and held Riley's hand. Marisol sat in the front row, in a mustard-yellow blouse she'd bought special for the occasion, holding a bundle of papers that felt weightless in her hands.

"All right," the judge said, smiling at Riley. "This is the last one. You're going to be a Whitaker, officially, legally, forever. How do you feel about that?"

Riley looked at Dean, then at Marisol, then back at the judge.

"Good," she said. "I've been waiting for a long time."

The judge signed, and the court officer stamped the papers, and then the three of them were standing outside in the bright September sun, and Riley was clutching the grey rabbit with the stitched ear — her rabbit now, the one she'd had in her hands that night, the one she'd kept hidden in the attic for six years — and she was laughing.

"I'm a Whitaker," she said, testing it out.

"You always were," Dean said.

Marisol took them out for ice cream to celebrate. They sat at a picnic table by the river — the same river, swollen and angry in the spring, now calm and glittering in the autumn light — and Riley told them about her plans for school, for the room she wanted to paint, for the dog she was going to convince them to let her have.