“Has asking for something been called trouble?”
A nod.
“What did you ask for?”
He shrugged.
Then whispered:
“To stay next to you.”
I looked toward the doorway.
The chair had not been the beginning.
It had been the moment the pattern became impossible to miss.
Theo knew his adoption story.
The parts appropriate to his age.
The names we knew.
The questions we still couldn’t answer.
He had photographs and a folder that belonged to him.
We did not pretend his life began when he entered my home.
Nor did we make every ordinary disagreement an opportunity to remind him how fortunate he was.
I had thought everyone close to us understood that.
Now he asked:
“Were you somebody else’s first?”
I nodded.
“Yes.”
“Did you like them?”
“I remember some things.”
“Good things?”
“Some.”
He watched my face.
“Can you still?”
“Remember them?”
He nodded.
“Of course.”
“Does Grandma mind?”
“No.”
The answer came easily because it was true.
My mother had never required me to erase one part of my life to secure another.
Theo leaned back against the bed.
“Camilla said you can’t belong to two families.”
I looked at him.
“When?”
“When I asked about my folder.”
His history folder.
He liked looking at it occasionally.
Sometimes he ignored it for weeks.
Both were allowed.
“What did you want to know?”
“If we could keep the picture downstairs.”
I knew the one.
A photograph of him before he came to live with me.
He was little.
His hair was longer.
