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Miles looked up sharply. “You can’t control everyone.”

“No,” TJ agreed. “But I can control how this department handles it.”

“That’s part of it.”

TJ straightened and came around the desk. “What are you asking me, Miles?”

Miles thought about Tanner at the table, and the way he’d tensed. He thought about the way he’d said, they ask for proof and I don’t have it. Thought about Savannah in that house, with Tanner trying to protect her.

“I’m asking what the actual path is,” Miles said eventually. “Not the ideal version. The real one.”

TJ was quiet for a moment, then nodded toward the chair. “Sit down.”

Miles sat. TJ remained standing, one hand on the back of the other chair. “The real path is that he needs legal advice and probably family court. He needs someone to help him establish guardianship formally if it was never done. The fact he’s her brother helps. The fact there’s a house helps. The fact he’s been caring for her all this time helps if it can be shown.” TJ paused. “The missing years complicate things.”

Miles stared at him. “You mean they’ll ask where he’s been.”

“Of course they will.” TJ went on. “None of that means he loses her, but that’s what he’ll assume, and I don’t blame him.”

“No.”

TJ looked at him more closely. “You’re taking this personally.” Miles didn’t answer. “That wasn’t a question.”

Leaning back in his chair, Miles licked his lips then looked at TJ. “He’s trying. That has to count for something.” It mattered to Miles more than it should have.

“It does.”

“He’s not careless with her.”

“No. He isn’t.”

Miles looked down at his hand then back at TJ. “Then I need to say something before someone else does. If it comes from a receptionist or a teacher or somebody at the clinic counter, he’ll hear it as a threat. If it comes from me in uniform, we could have the same problem.”

“Probably.” TJ nodded his eyes on Miles.

“But if nobody tells him, then he walks straight into it blind.”

Miles looked at TJ. “We need to tell him what comes next.”

TJ’s jaw tightened. “Not until he’s steady enough to hear it.”

Miles frowned. “He needs the truth.”

“Yeah,” TJ said. “And if you dump court, guardianship, and filings on him right now, all he’ll hear is that people are lining up to decide whether he keeps her or not. We get the basics done for him first and then we tell him the rest.”

Finally, TJ said, “So you tell him. Carefully.” TJ paused then continued, “Not as a deputy. You tell him as someone giving him the truth before it blindsides him.”

Miles nodded. “Okay.”

TJ tilted his head. “Can you do that?”

Miles met his eyes. “Yeah.” TJ’s expression said he wasn’t only asking about the conversation. Miles ignored that and nodded again. “Yeah,” he repeated.

“You push too hard,” TJ said, “and he’ll shut down or run. You make it sound official, and he’ll hear CPS even if you never say the letters. So don’t do that.”

“I know.”

TJ picked up the paperwork again. “I’ll ask around quietly. See who can point him in the right direction.”