He appointed a senior project director to handle more of the routine travel associated with his company. He began reviewing which meetings genuinely required his presence and which could be managed by other qualified employees.
He still worked hard.
His company still had deadlines.
And difficult projects didn't disappear because he became more attentive at home.
But Marcus stopped treating every additional business opportunity as more important than being present for his daughter.
He adjusted his schedule to attend school events.
Protected time for family dinners.
And checked directly with teachers and caregivers rather than assuming that silence meant everything was fine.
He also began spending time with a counselor himself.
The conversations weren't always comfortable.
He had to confront the way grief had influenced his decisions after his first wife's death.
He'd wanted Lily to have a motherly presence so badly that he'd sometimes dismissed signs suggesting the new arrangement wasn't working.
He'd interpreted his daughter's quietness as adjustment.
And Vanessa's confidence as competence.
Those assumptions hadn't caused Vanessa's misconduct.
She was responsible for her own choices.
But Marcus needed to understand why he'd failed to recognize the warning signs sooner.
He couldn't change the past.
He could change how he responded to his daughter in the future.
Mason continued visiting through arrangements worked out with the responsible adults.
He was thirteen by then, taller and more confident, though the events of the previous year still affected him.
He remained close to Lily.
Whenever they met, she ran toward him with the enthusiasm of a little sister who believed her older brother knew how to fix almost anything.
They built model cars.
Played board games.
And watched animated movies while arguing about which character was the funniest.
Marcus never asked Mason to discuss the recordings during their visits.
He didn't want the boy's relationship with the family to revolve around evidence.
Mason deserved to be more than the child who exposed his mother's behavior.
He was a student.
A brother.
A boy who loved basketball and sometimes forgot to finish his homework because he became absorbed in building miniature airplanes.
One Saturday, they worked together on a wooden model in the dining room.
Lily sat nearby coloring a picture of a purple butterfly.