Oliver unfolded the paper. He read slowly, tapping his knee to a beat only he could hear. “I don’t want to fight. I want to read like I build Lego. If the letters would sit still, I could make anything.”

Richard felt in his chest the ache of a hundred unsaid things—apologies, promises, a boyhood he’d learned to outrun. He leaned forward and said to the teacher, to the counselor, to his son, “We will make sure the letters sit still.”

The counselor smiled. “That’s what we’re here for.”

On the way home Oliver kicked a pebble down the sidewalk, each tap a percussion in the quiet afternoon. “Dad?”

“Yes?”

“Do grown-ups get courage points?”

Richard considered. The old him would have made a joke about bonuses. The new answer arrived like a clean breath. “They do. But they have to earn them the same way kids do.”