I brought him home.”
I wanted to keep fighting.
Jonathan had still made an enormous decision without me.
Pregnancy hadn’t made me fragile or incapable.
I deserved to be part of choices that changed our family.
But then Finn moved under the blanket.
The backpack slipped from his arm and landed softly on the floor.
He sat up.
His eyes went first to Jonathan.
Then to me.
“Am I going somewhere else?” he asked.
No accusation.
No tears.
That made it worse.
He sounded practiced.
As though adults had been deciding where he belonged all evening.
Jonathan opened his mouth, but I raised one hand.
For the first time since they came through the door, I forced myself to look directly at Finn instead of at the problem surrounding him.
He had dark hair that needed cutting.
A small scrape near one eyebrow.
A pale crescent-shaped mark beside his thumb.
My breath caught.
When I had held my newborn son four years earlier, a nurse had pointed out a tiny crescent-shaped birthmark on his hand.
“Looks like a little moon,” she had said.
I had kissed it before I let him go.
Finn saw me staring and hid his hand inside his sleeve.
I broke.
Not dramatically.
I simply lowered myself into the nearest chair and cried so quietly that my shoulders shook.
Finn watched me with alarm.
“Did I do something?”
“No.”
The word came out too fast.
I wiped my face.
“No, Finn.
You didn’t do anything.”
I wanted to cross the room and gather him into my arms.
I didn’t.
He had lost his mother hours earlier.
The last thing he needed was a stranger claiming him because of a document and a birthmark.
Blood did not entitle me to his trust.
So I remained where I was.
“You can stay here tonight,” I said.
Finn looked at Jonathan.
Jonathan nodded.
Then Finn looked back at me.
“On the floor?”
My chest tightened.
“No.
Not on the floor.”
Our daughter’s nursery was the only finished child’s room, and I couldn’t bring myself to place him inside a room built entirely for a baby he had never met.
Instead, Jonathan carried clean sheets into the small guest room while I found one of the soft blankets from the nursery closet.
Finn followed us carrying the backpack.
He refused to let Jonathan take it.
When the bed was ready, he stood beside it without climbing in.
“What do I call you?” he asked me.
