"A hundred people voted on my life without asking me?" he asked. Raina looked straight at him. "They voted on whether they would support an option. They didn't vote to decide where you live. That's yours to discuss with your mother and the court. But yes, we should have told you earlier."
Eli breathed out slowly. For four years, nearly every decision about his life had been made without him: his father's disappearance, his mother's silence, the school's assessments of his abilities, and now a roomful of riders making contingency plans. He was grateful to have people worried about him and furious that gratitude seemed to keep arriving with a new loss of control attached. Raina did not try to erase the anger.
"Do you want us to stop considering guardianship?" she asked. Eli thought about the house, his mother, the long table at the compound, and the uncertain visit waiting for them in a few hours. "I don't know yet," he said. "I want to hear what the caseworker says. Then I want you to ask me before you decide anything else."
Raina nodded. "Fair." She stood, then paused at the kitchen door. "Your father trusted these people completely," she said. "That doesn't mean we never make mistakes. It means we have to tell the truth when we do."
Eli slept badly. He dreamed of a long road with no lights and woke to the sound of someone moving in the kitchen. For a moment he was nine again and thought his father was making breakfast. Then he saw the pale winter sky beyond the curtains and remembered the conversation at the table, the truth about Caleb, and the caseworker who would be arriving before lunch.
Sandra Vetch arrived just before nine, carrying a clipboard and wearing a gray wool coat. She was a caseworker with more than a decade of experience and the sort of tired concentration that came from needing to notice what people did not say. Raina introduced herself as a family friend, made clear that Darla was Eli's legal parent, and stepped aside so the two women could speak directly. Sandra entered without comment on the leather vest hanging beneath Raina's coat.
The visit lasted nearly two hours. Sandra examined the home, asked about food and heat, spoke with Darla, and reviewed the school's attendance concerns. She noticed the recent repairs and asked who had made them. Darla answered that friends were helping and did not pretend the repairs had always been there; she explained that the house had become difficult to maintain while her health deteriorated.
Sandra wrote notes, then asked to speak with Eli alone. Raina went outside, and Darla returned to the kitchen. Eli sat across from the caseworker in the living room and tried not to stare at her clipboard. Its blank spaces reminded him of school forms, each one waiting to turn something complicated into an answer too small to hold it.