“Different things, over time,” Patrice said. “Callum is… complicated.”
“I’d still like to meet him.”
Callum stood the instant I approached. “Hi,” I said. “I’m Georgina.”
He glanced toward the only empty chair nearby and gestured politely toward it. “Please, ma’am. You can sit here.”
I very nearly laughed. “I’m forty-seven, not ninety.”
His mouth twitched. “I wasn’t implying anything.”
“You absolutely were.”
That earned me a real, genuine smile. We ended up discussing the book in his hands for nearly an entire hour. When I finally left, Patrice told me plainly, “One good conversation doesn’t guarantee a placement.”
“I know.”
So I came back anyway. Again, and again.
Callum stayed guarded, but genuinely kind underneath it. He had a dry sense of humor, and remembered absolutely everything I ever told him. For four months straight, the two of us met regularly at the agency, then libraries, diners, parks, and various supervised outings. I kept quietly waiting for the difficult teenager everyone had warned me about. He never once actually appeared.
Once, I mentioned offhand that Sophia used to genuinely hate raisins. Three weeks later, Callum pushed a cookie across a café table toward me. “Don’t worry. I checked already. No raisins in it.”
I stared at him. “What?”
“Nothing.”
I’d learned, through my own grief, that small kindnesses could sometimes feel genuinely dangerous. Eventually, though, we began talking seriously about adoption itself.
“You’d really want that?” Callum asked.
“Yes.”
“Permanent?”
“That’s generally how adoption actually works.”
He looked away from me. “What if I mess it up somehow?”
“Then we’d deal together with whatever you messed up.”
“What if you regretted it, eventually?”
“Then I’d simply be an adult, having a feeling. You’d still remain my kid regardless.”
His eyes stayed fixed on the table. “You make everything sound so simple.”
“No. I make commitment sound simple. That’s genuinely different.”
When Callum finally moved into my house, he treated absolutely everything as though he were merely borrowing it temporarily. He made his own bed before breakfast every morning. Washed his plate immediately after eating. Folded towels without ever once being asked to.
The first Saturday, I nearly tripped over a loose porch step. Callum appeared instantly with a screwdriver in hand. “How long has this actually been like this?”
“Couple of years now.”
