"And Jasmine?"
"Yeah?"
"If you ever feel like you're drowning again, you call Denise. You call my aunt. You call a sitter. You call me on the emergency line and you say the dog is too much. You do not put him in a car and drive him to a building where they decide who lives."
"I won't," she said. "I swear on everything. I won't."
They began.
The first counseling session was in a small office with a box of tissues on the table and a painting of a lake that looked like it had been chosen for its neutrality. Dr. Okonkwo listened more than she spoke. She asked Marcus about deployment. She asked Jasmine about the Tuesday morning. She asked both of them what "family" meant, and when Marcus said "Shadow," without hesitation, Jasmine flinched and then nodded, because of course that was the answer, and of course it had always been the answer, and of course that was part of why the betrayal cut so deep.
"You didn't just surrender a pet," Dr. Okonkwo said gently to Jasmine. "In Marcus's map of the world, you surrendered a brother. In your map, you were trying to keep a household from collapsing. Both maps can be true at the same time. The work is building a map you can share."