The first request failed because he had not completed the full therapy and ethics conditions the court required.
The second failed because Rebecca Snow, still occasionally involved in review, found his language “focused primarily on reputation repair rather than child welfare.”
He stopped asking after that.
Dorothy heard bits of his life through the loose, efficient network of women who traded information without ever calling it gossip. He had moved twice. He consulted privately but never regained his surgical standing. He dated younger women. He drank more than he used to. Laurel had quietly shifted her charitable donations to a parish two towns over where nobody knew the story well enough to mention it.
Dorothy did not dwell on him.
That, perhaps, was her last victory over him.
He no longer occupied central real estate in the life he had tried to control.
At school events, Dorothy was known simply as Grandma Brennan. The volunteers loved her because she actually read emails and showed up with exact supply lists fulfilled. The teachers loved her because the triplets arrived with homework done, lunch packed, and emotional weather mostly stable.
Mostly.