Evan Roth had walked into boardrooms where grown men sweated through thousand-dollar suits, and he’d never once felt his knees go weak.

But the moment he stepped into the therapy wing of his own mansion, his body betrayed him.

He froze in the doorway so hard the edge of the mahogany frame dug into his shoulder. His briefcase slipped, hit the marble, and cracked open like a dropped jaw. Papers skated across the floor—quarterly forecasts, acquisition drafts, a contract he’d been about to sign in Chicago before the meeting got canceled and he’d flown home early to “surprise the boys.”

Surprise them.

His lungs refused to work.

Both wheelchairs were pushed against the wall—empty, lined up like abandoned cages. And on the padded mat in the center of the room, his housekeeper—Rachel Monroe—was on her knees with his twin sons, Aaron and Simon, in a position Evan had never allowed.

They weren’t strapped into their chairs.

They weren’t sitting.

They were—God help him—standing.

Or trying to.

Rachel had one hand under Aaron’s ribcage, the other braced at his hip, her face inches from his as if she could speak strength into bone. Simon clung to the parallel bars, his skinny arms trembling, his feet planted on the mat like they were stepping onto a planet they didn’t trust. Their legs were wrapped in soft braces Evan had never seen, and a thick resistance band ran between their ankles to keep their alignment.

Aaron’s cheeks were wet, not from pain—Evan knew what pain looked like on his boys—but from effort. Simon’s mouth was open, and something between a giggle and a gasp kept slipping out of him, as if laughter had been trapped in his chest for eighteen months and was only now finding a crack to escape through.

Evan’s throat burned.

“What… what is this?” The words came out broken, like glass in his mouth.

Rachel looked up fast—too fast—like a kid caught sneaking cookies. Her eyes widened, then narrowed with the kind of calm people had when they refused to be intimidated.

“Mr. Roth,” she said carefully. “You’re home.”

“You took them out of their chairs,” Evan said. His hands lifted slowly to his head as if he could physically hold his thoughts in place. “You took them out without permission.”

“Permission from who?” Rachel asked, still holding Aaron steady. “The chairs?”

Evan’s heart slammed. “From me.”

On the mat, Aaron’s legs shook so hard his knees threatened to fold. Rachel adjusted him with practiced gentleness.

“Breathe,” she whispered to him. “In through your nose. Like we practiced. I’ve got you.”

Evan took one step forward and felt his vision pulse. He saw it in a flash—his wife’s hair in the sunlight that last morning, the twins buckled into their car seats, their little voices chanting the alphabet wrong on purpose to make her laugh. Then the phone call. The screeching siren in his ears. The hospital hallway that smelled like bleach and prayers.

Eighteen months earlier, a drunk driver ran a red light and shattered Evan’s life with the casual cruelty of a spilled drink.

His wife, Claire, had been driving the boys home from preschool. The collision crushed the driver’s side. Claire died instantly. Aaron and Simon survived, but their injuries changed everything—severe spinal trauma, damage at T12 and L1. The doctors didn’t soften the truth. They said words Evan still heard when the house was too quiet: most likely never walk again.

Evan did what he had always done when reality refused to cooperate.

He tried to control it.

He surrounded his grief with specialists, swallowed his guilt behind nondisclosure agreements, built a fortress of routines and equipment and medical staff whose résumés could’ve cured armies. Everything was calculated. Everything was safe. His sons sat in their wheelchairs like prisoners, silent, distant, barely reacting to the world. The light in their eyes faded slowly, like a candle starved of oxygen, and Evan told himself it was the trauma. The depression. The adjustment.

He told himself there was nothing else he could do.

And then, three months ago, Rachel Monroe walked into his home with a mop bucket and a quiet voice.

Twenty-nine years old. Hired to cook, clean, and help with daily tasks. No medical training. No therapy background. She’d spoken politely in the interview, answered questions without flinching at the size of the mansion or the coldness of Evan’s voice.

“What experience do you have with… children like mine?” he’d asked then, because he couldn’t say broken.

Rachel had hesitated, just long enough for Evan to notice, then said, “Enough to know they’re not a diagnosis.”

He’d hired her because the agency was desperate, and because he didn’t care about warmth anymore as long as the floor stayed spotless and his boys were safe.

Now, in this room, Evan stared at the braces on his sons’ legs as if they were weapons.

“Rachel,” he said, forcing his voice to sound like a CEO and not a terrified father. “Step away from them. Now.”

Aaron whimpered. Simon’s fingers tightened around the bars.

Rachel didn’t move away—she moved closer, like she was willing to take Evan’s anger full in the face if it meant the twins didn’t fall.

“If I let go,” she said quietly, “he drops. And if he drops, he’ll stop trusting his body again. So I’m not letting go.”

Evan’s jaw clenched. “You have no right—”

“I have a responsibility,” Rachel cut in, her tone still soft but edged with steel. “Not to you. To them.”

Evan took another step forward. The security sensor above the door blinked. If he yelled, the cameras would record. If he called Marcus—his head of security—Rachel would be dragged out like a criminal. He could fire her before she finished her next breath.

And still, he couldn’t move.

Because Simon—his quiet Simon who hadn’t spoken a full sentence since the crash—let out a sound.

“Da…d.”

It wasn’t clean. It wasn’t even fully formed. But it was unmistakable.

Evan stopped as if someone had punched him in the chest.

Simon blinked up at him, eyes wide with fear and something else—something Evan hadn’t seen in a year and a half.

Hope.

“Dada,” Simon whispered again, and his lip trembled like a baby’s.

Rachel swallowed, as if she hadn’t expected it either. “He’s been trying,” she said. “For weeks.”

Evan’s mouth opened, but nothing came out. His fingers twitched. His hands shook.

“What did you do to them?” he finally asked, and he hated how much he sounded like an accusation.

Rachel’s eyes flashed. “I sang. I moved their legs gently. I made it a game. I let them be boys instead of patients.” Her voice softened as she glanced down at Aaron. “I listened when they cried, and I didn’t treat their tears like a problem to be medicated.”

Evan swallowed hard. “You’re not a therapist.”

“No,” Rachel agreed. “But I know what it looks like when someone decides a child’s future before the child gets a vote.”

Evan’s chest tightened. “You went behind my back.”

Rachel’s shoulders rose with a quiet breath. “I tried to talk to you the first week I noticed they were stronger than everyone claimed. You were on calls, in meetings, flying to London, Tokyo, Chicago. Every time I brought it up, the nurses said, ‘Mr. Roth doesn’t like surprises.’”

“I don’t,” Evan said sharply.

Rachel met his gaze without blinking. “That’s why I did it anyway.”

The words landed like a slap, and for a second Evan saw something he hadn’t considered: not defiance for fun, but defiance born from watching people accept tragedy as permanent.

He looked around the room. The equipment gleamed—treadmills for partial weight support, electrical stimulation units, a standing frame. He’d bought all of it like throwing money at a hurricane. And yet the boys never laughed in here. This room had always smelled like fear.

Now it smelled like effort, sweat, and something alive.

“Put them back,” Evan said, voice strained. “Now. Before you hurt them.”

Rachel lowered Aaron slowly into a sitting position on the mat with careful control. Simon stayed gripping the bars, his knees wobbling but his eyes locked on Evan.

“They’re not glass,” Rachel murmured. “They’re human.”

Evan’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He didn’t answer. It buzzed again. He didn’t care who it was.

Rachel carefully guided Simon down too, then sat back on her heels, wiping sweat from her forehead with the back of her wrist like a boxer between rounds.

Evan stared at the boys. “How long have you been doing this?”

Rachel hesitated. “Since you left for Zurich.”

“That was—” Evan’s mind calculated. “Five weeks.”

Evan’s vision flashed hot. “Five weeks,” he repeated, louder. “You’ve been taking my children out of their chairs for five weeks without telling me.”

“I’ve been helping them,” Rachel corrected, and there was a tremor in her voice now—fear, maybe, but not regret. “And I did tell you. I told your staff. I left notes. No one gave them to you.”

Evan’s head snapped toward the desk in the corner—the one nurse station in the therapy wing where charts were kept. A file folder sat open. A sticky note clung to the edge.

Evan walked over and ripped it off.

Aaron tolerated 3 mins supported stand. Simon initiated hip flexion with cues. Both smiled today. Please tell Mr. Roth.

His throat closed.

He looked back at Rachel. “Who approved these braces?”

“I ordered them,” she admitted. “On my own card.”

Evan’s eyes narrowed. “You can’t afford—”

“My brother can,” she said quietly, and something in her tone shifted, like a door cracking open to a room she rarely entered. “He pays me back every birthday, every holiday, every time he finishes another marathon. Because someone once told him he’d never walk again and my mother believed them. I didn’t.”

Evan’s stomach tightened. “Your brother was paralyzed?”

“Cycling accident,” Rachel said. “He was eleven. Doctors said he’d never run. My mom cried for months. And then an old physical therapist—retired, barely paid—showed us how to make therapy a routine instead of a punishment. He taught me tiny things: how to cue the core, how to use rhythm and song to trigger movement patterns. And he told me the most important thing of all.” She looked at the twins. “Kids don’t fight for a future they can’t imagine.”

Evan stared at his sons—two boys who had stopped imagining anything.

“Why didn’t you go to medical school?” he asked, because he didn’t know what else to ask.

Rachel’s laugh was short and bitter. “Because life doesn’t pause for dreams. I raised my brother while my mom worked double shifts. Then my mom got sick. Then bills happened. You know how it goes.”

Evan didn’t, actually. But he didn’t say that.

Instead, he said, “You should’ve told me.”

Rachel’s eyes hardened. “You should’ve been here.”

The silence that followed felt dangerous.

Behind Evan, the door creaked. He turned sharply and saw Nora Whitfield—his mother-in-law—standing there in a tailored coat that screamed old money and older resentment. Her lipstick was perfect. Her eyes were not.

“I knew it,” Nora said, voice slicing the air. “I knew something was wrong the moment I heard laughter in this house.”

Evan’s blood ran cold. “Nora—”

“Don’t ‘Nora’ me,” she snapped. “Claire would be disgusted.”

Rachel rose slowly, putting herself between Nora and the boys without even thinking.

Nora’s gaze swept over Rachel like she was dirt on a shoe. “And you,” she hissed. “The maid. Playing doctor. Touching my grandchildren like you own them.”

Rachel’s chin lifted. “I’m helping them stand.”

Nora’s face twisted. “You’re risking their spines.”

Evan’s mind raced. Nora had always blamed him—blamed his travel, his ambition, his “constant absence”—for the crash, as if Evan had personally poured the vodka down the driver’s throat. After Claire’s funeral, Nora had threatened court.

If you ruin what’s left of my daughter’s family, I will take those boys from you.

Evan had tightened the trust, hired attorneys, built walls. He hadn’t realized Nora was still looking for cracks.

Nora stepped closer, eyes narrowing at the braces. “Who approved this?”

“No one,” Evan said, and the words tasted like betrayal. “She did it herself.”

Nora’s eyes lit with a cruel satisfaction. “So it’s true. Negligence. Unauthorized treatment. Endangerment.” She looked at Evan like she was already writing the headline. “You’ve let a stranger experiment on your sons.”

Evan’s chest tightened. The room spun with possibilities—lawsuits, custody hearings, reporters, the board murmuring about “instability.” He could see the future collapsing into a scandal he couldn’t control.

Simon made a small sound, distressed by the tension.

Rachel’s voice stayed calm. “Ma’am, if you want to report me, do it after you look at their faces.”

Nora scoffed. “Faces don’t change spinal trauma.”

Rachel turned to the boys. “Aaron,” she said gently, “can you show Mr. Roth what you did yesterday? Just your toes.”

Evan’s heart slammed. “Rachel—don’t—”

Aaron looked between them, frightened, then lowered his gaze to his feet. His small toes trembled. Nothing happened for a second.

Then—so subtle Evan almost missed it—Aaron’s big toe lifted.

It was a fraction. A twitch.

But Evan’s entire body went still.

Nora’s mouth tightened. “Reflex.”

Rachel shook her head. “Reflexes don’t happen on command.”

Aaron’s toe lowered. His eyes filled with tears.

“I did it,” he whispered, voice thin. “I did it for Mommy.”

Evan’s throat ripped open. He took a step forward, then stopped, afraid of breaking the moment by breathing too loud.

Nora’s face flickered—something like doubt cracking her certainty.

Evan turned to Rachel, voice barely there. “Is this real?”

Rachel’s eyes shone, but she kept her voice steady. “It’s real. It’s small. It’s the beginning.”

Nora recovered fast. “Beginnings don’t excuse recklessness,” she snapped. “This is exactly how people get hurt. Evan, call Dr. Leighton. Call the neurology team. Have her removed.”

Dr. Leighton. The star specialist Evan paid more than some people earned in a decade. The man who spoke in cold probabilities and never once sat on the floor with the boys. The man who’d told Evan, “Hope is not a treatment plan.”

Evan’s phone buzzed again. This time, he looked.

DR. LEIGHTON.

Of course.

Evan felt like the universe was laughing at him.

He answered with a tight voice. “Leighton.”

“Mr. Roth,” the doctor said briskly, “I’m calling because your insurance company flagged a purchase—orthotic braces shipped to your address. Did you authorize new equipment?”

Evan’s gaze locked on Rachel.

“No,” Evan said slowly. “I didn’t.”

A pause. “Then I suggest you find out who did. Those children have spinal injuries. Unauthorized bracing can cause permanent damage.”

Nora leaned in, listening like a predator.

Rachel’s voice cut in, clear and calm. “Doctor, I’m the one who ordered them. And I measured them twice.”

There was a beat of stunned silence on the line. “Who is this?” Leighton demanded.

Rachel didn’t blink. “The person who hears them laugh.”

Leighton’s voice sharpened. “Put Mr. Roth back on.”

Evan held the phone tighter. “I’m here.”

Leighton exhaled like he was dealing with a difficult investor. “Mr. Roth, I can be at your home in forty minutes. Do not allow any further standing exercises until I assess them.”

Nora’s lips curled. “There. You heard him.”

Evan stared at his sons—at Simon’s hands still shaking from gripping the bars, at Aaron’s tear-streaked face, at the toe that had lifted like a tiny flag raised after a long war.

He thought of Claire. He thought of all the nights he’d sat outside their room, hearing only the hum of machines and thinking he was doing the right thing by buying the best.

And he thought, with a sick twist in his stomach, of how he’d been absent even when he was home—how he’d treated his boys like fragile investments instead of children starving for life.

He lowered the phone. “Come,” he told Leighton. “Assess them.”

Then he looked at Rachel.

“But you’re not leaving,” he added, and he heard the surprise in his own voice.

Nora’s head snapped toward him. “Evan—”

Evan’s eyes hardened. “Not today.”

Nora’s face flushed with fury. “You’re choosing the maid over the doctors? Over your own family?”

Evan’s voice dropped low. “I’m choosing my sons.”

Nora’s gaze flared with the promise of war. “Then don’t be shocked when I do what Claire would’ve wanted.”

She turned sharply and stormed out, heels striking the floor like gunshots.

The door slammed.

Aaron flinched. Simon’s eyes brimmed.

Evan swallowed his panic. He knelt—actually knelt—on the mat in front of them, something he hadn’t done since before the crash when he used to build Lego towers at their level.

“Hey,” he whispered, voice rough. “It’s okay. I’m here.”

Simon stared at him, distrust and longing wrestling in his face.

Rachel remained standing, but her shoulders sagged slightly, like adrenaline was bleeding out of her. “She’s going to try to take them,” Rachel said softly.

Evan’s jaw tightened. “Let her try.”

Rachel studied him for a moment, as if weighing whether to believe him. “You have enemies,” she said quietly. “In your world, in your family. People who’d love to see you fall.”

Evan laughed humorlessly. “Tell me something I don’t know.”

Rachel’s gaze lowered. “Then listen to something you haven’t heard in a while.”

She crouched beside Simon. “Show him,” she whispered.

Simon hesitated, then shifted his weight forward in a way that made Evan’s breath catch. It wasn’t a step, not yet. But it was intention. A choice.

Evan’s eyes burned.

“Daddy,” Aaron said, voice small, “are you mad at Rachel?”

Evan looked at Rachel. He remembered the rage that had shot through him like a reflex when he’d first seen them out of their chairs. He remembered how his fear had disguised itself as control.

He reached out slowly and touched Aaron’s hair, gentle.

“I was scared,” Evan admitted. “I’m still scared.”

Aaron blinked. “Scared of what?”

Evan’s throat tightened. “That I’ll lose you again. That I’ll fail you.”

Rachel’s voice softened. “You already lost them once,” she said, not cruelly, but honestly. “Not their bodies. Their spark. You can get that back. But not by locking them in routines like a prison.”

Evan stared at his sons, and for the first time in months, he let himself see it: the way their eyes had dulled. The way they’d stopped asking for toys. The way laughter had become a stranger.

He looked back at Rachel. “What do you need?”

Rachel blinked, caught off guard. “What?”

“What do you need,” Evan repeated, “to do this right. Safely. With professionals. With oversight. Whatever it takes.”

Rachel’s lips parted. Emotion flashed, then she swallowed it down. “I need you to be present,” she said. “Not just your money. You.”

Evan’s chest ached. “Okay.”

Rachel nodded once, as if sealing a contract more serious than any he’d ever signed. “Then we start today,” she said. “Together.”

Dr. Leighton arrived forty-two minutes later with two assistants and a look like he’d swallowed a lemon. He assessed the boys, tested reflexes, checked skin and alignment, glared at the braces, then asked in a flat voice, “Who instructed these exercises?”

Rachel met his gaze. “I did.”

Leighton’s eyebrows rose. “On what basis?”

Rachel didn’t flinch. “On the basis that children are not percentages.”

Leighton’s mouth tightened. He ran more tests. He made notes. He tried to remain unmoved. But when Aaron lifted his toe again—on command—Leighton’s pen paused in midair.

Evan watched the doctor’s mask crack, just slightly.

“This is… unusual,” Leighton admitted, and he sounded like it pained him to say it. “It doesn’t mean they’ll walk. But it suggests incomplete pathways. Potential. With intensive therapy, neuroplasticity—”

Rachel cut in softly, “With hope.”

Leighton shot her a glare, then looked at Evan. “Mr. Roth, if you want to pursue this, it will require a structured plan. Daily work. It will be exhausting. There will be setbacks.”

Evan stared at his sons. Aaron was smiling faintly. Simon was holding Rachel’s hand like it was a lifeline.

Evan nodded. “Do it,” he said. “All of it.”

The next weeks turned the mansion into something it had not been since Claire died: alive.

Not magically healed. Not easy. Alive.

Rachel stopped being “the maid” in Evan’s head and became the person who knew which song made Aaron push harder, which silly story made Simon relax his shoulders, which day they needed rest instead of more work. Evan rearranged his schedule, canceled trips, pissed off investors, and for the first time in his life didn’t care. When his assistant warned him, “The board is getting nervous,” Evan said, “Let them.” When his lawyer friend, Caleb, told him Nora had filed an emergency petition claiming negligence, Evan looked at the papers and said, “We fight.”

Nora tried to weaponize everything—Rachel’s lack of credentials, the braces purchase, the “unsafe” standing exercises. She contacted a reporter Evan recognized from a business scandal years ago. She whispered about “billionaire negligence” and “poor household staff pressured to perform medical care.”

But she didn’t anticipate one thing.

The twins started to change in ways that couldn’t be faked.

They started talking more—small words at first, then full sentences. They started asking for toys again. They started laughing, loud and messy, with the kind of joy that made the nurses pause in the hallway just to listen.

And one evening, after a brutal therapy session where Aaron cried and screamed that he hated his legs, Evan sat on the floor with him and didn’t try to fix it with money or logic.

He just held him.

“I miss Mommy,” Aaron sobbed.

Evan’s eyes filled. “Me too,” he whispered.

Rachel sat nearby, quiet, letting the grief breathe instead of smothering it. Simon crawled—awkwardly, using his arms and dragging his legs—toward a framed photo of Claire that Evan had kept in the hall like a shrine no one was allowed to touch.

Simon pressed his forehead to the glass.

“Hi, Mommy,” he whispered. “We’re trying.”

Evan’s heart shattered and stitched itself back together in the same breath.

The custody hearing came fast—Nora’s petition filed, court date set, lawyers sharpening knives. Evan expected it to be a nightmare.

But on the morning of the hearing, something happened that neither money nor anger could manufacture.

Rachel had set up the parallel bars in the therapy room the night before, like always. Evan came in ready to watch, bracing himself for the daily fight.

Aaron looked at the bars, then at Evan.

“Daddy,” he said, voice serious, “watch me.”

Evan’s stomach clenched. “Okay, buddy.”

Rachel positioned Aaron carefully, hands at his hips, bracing his core. Simon stood beside him, gripping the bars.

Aaron took a breath. His legs trembled.

Then—slowly, painfully, like the world was holding its own breath—Aaron shifted his weight and moved one foot forward.

It was a tiny step. Assisted. Wobbly.

But it was a step.

Evan’s mouth fell open. His vision blurred.

Aaron looked up at him, eyes wide with disbelief.

“I—” Aaron whispered. “I stepped.”

Rachel’s face crumpled for half a second before she forced herself steady. “Yes,” she whispered. “You did.”

Simon, watching, let out a laugh that turned into a sob. “Aaron did it!”

Evan covered his mouth with his hand because if he didn’t, he would make a sound he couldn’t take back. His knees hit the mat without him deciding to kneel.

“I’m here,” he whispered, voice breaking. “I saw it. I saw you.”

Later that day in court, Nora’s attorney spoke with polished cruelty. He painted Rachel as reckless. He painted Evan as an absent billionaire trying to buy redemption.

Then Evan’s lawyer presented medical reports from Dr. Leighton—carefully worded, conservative, but undeniable: increased muscle activation, improved mood, increased communication, emerging voluntary movement.

And then Evan asked the judge for permission to speak, not as a CEO, not as a man used to controlling narratives, but as a father.

“I thought control was love,” Evan said, voice low. “I thought if I made everything safe, everything perfect, my sons would survive what happened.” He swallowed hard. “But they weren’t living. They were existing. Rachel didn’t give them a miracle. She gave them a reason to fight. And she forced me to stop hiding behind routines and start showing up.”

Nora stared at him like he had betrayed her daughter.

But when the judge asked Dr. Leighton directly whether the therapy was harming the children, Leighton—stiff, reluctant—said, “No, Your Honor. Under supervised conditions, it’s appropriate. And frankly… it may be the best thing that’s happened to them.”

Nora’s case weakened in real time.

The judge denied the emergency removal.

Nora left the courtroom with her chin high and her heart full of rage, but her power had cracked.

That night, Evan came home and found Rachel in the kitchen, scrubbing a pot that didn’t need scrubbing—her hands busy because her emotions were too big to hold still.

Evan stood in the doorway.

“You saved us,” he said quietly.

Rachel didn’t look up. “I didn’t save you,” she replied. “I reminded them they’re still here.”

Evan stepped closer. “And what about you?” he asked. “Who reminds you?”

Rachel’s hands paused. For a second, the mask slipped. “No one,” she admitted, barely audible.

Evan’s chest tightened. He thought of the way she’d stood between Nora and the boys without hesitation. The way she’d absorbed blame like a shield. The way she’d worked quietly, risking everything, because she refused to accept a story where children lost.

“I want you to stay,” Evan said.

Rachel finally looked up. Her eyes were tired. Wary. “As what?” she asked. “The maid? The scapegoat? The miracle worker you can fire if the board gets nervous?”

Evan flinched because it was fair.

“As family,” he said, and his voice shook. “If you’ll let us.”

Rachel stared at him for a long moment, then glanced toward the hallway where the twins’ laughter floated like music.

“I don’t know how to be that,” she whispered.

Evan nodded. “Then we learn.”

Months later, on a bright morning that smelled like cut grass and fresh paint, Evan stood on the back patio with a cup of coffee he’d forgotten to drink, watching his sons in the yard.

Aaron was strapped into a pediatric walker, moving slowly, each step a battle, each step a victory. Simon was beside him in his own braces, pushing forward with a determination that made Evan’s eyes sting. Rachel walked behind them, hands ready but not hovering like fear—more like faith.

Evan’s phone rang. It was the board. It was investors. It was the world demanding he return to being the man who never stumbled.

He silenced it.

Aaron looked up, spotted Evan watching, and grinned.

“Daddy!” Aaron yelled. “Look!”

Evan stepped down onto the grass, shoes sinking slightly into the earth like a promise.

“I’m looking,” he called back, voice thick. “I’m right here.”

And for the first time since the crash—since the night Evan had buried his wife and felt his life harden into something cold—he didn’t feel speechless.

He felt present.

He felt terrified and grateful and alive.

Rachel caught his eye over the boys’ heads, and for once, she didn’t look like someone bracing for impact.

She looked like someone who believed the story could still change.

Evan walked toward them, into the sunlight, into the messy, painful, beautiful work of becoming a family again—step by step, together.