He stared at me. “You’ve genuinely been walking on this thing?”
“I enjoy a little danger.”
“You’re ridiculous.”
A month later, he called me Mom entirely by accident. “Mom, have you seen my charger anywhere?” We both froze completely. Callum turned bright red. “Kitchen counter,” I said quickly. “Right.” Neither one of us mentioned it out loud. But he kept right on saying it regardless, over and over, in the weeks that followed. By the time the adoption was finally finalized, I’d genuinely stopped waiting for him to eventually become somebody else entirely.
Chapter 2 – What the Meatloaf Couldn’t HideThen, exactly two weeks later, Callum came to dinner and barely touched his own meatloaf. That scared me considerably more than it probably should have. He genuinely loved meatloaf.
“Sweetheart?” I reached across the table and touched his hand gently.
“I’m fine.”
“Terrible lie.”
His fork scraped uselessly against his plate. He was trembling. “And you’ll probably wish you’d never actually adopted me.”
“Callum.”
He pulled away from me, eyes filling with sudden tears. “Mom, I need to tell you something.” My own fork slipped straight out of my fingers. My stomach dropped hard. “Callum, what happened?”
He looked genuinely terrified. Then he whispered, “I have a sister.”
“Your file said you didn’t have any siblings placed alongside you.”
“She’s not actually placed with me.”
Callum explained that the two of them had entered foster care together, years earlier, back when Willa was still quite little. Her name was Willa. She was nine years old now. He’d made her breakfast every morning. Gotten her ready for school. Helped with her homework. Whenever she woke up scared at night, she’d come looking for him specifically.
Then a family had eventually offered Willa a permanent home. “They didn’t have room for me too,” Callum said. “I was fourteen at the time. They kept asking me what I genuinely thought was best for her.”
“Who told you that?” I asked, feeling anger rising fast inside me.
“Everybody did. They all said Willa deserved real stability.”
“And you agreed to it?”
He laughed bitterly. “I was fourteen years old. They kept asking me what was best for her. So I said yes.”
After that separation, Callum had begun quietly sabotaging his own placements. Not dramatically, exactly. He never once turned violent. He simply learned, over time, how to make people give up on him first. “I’d stop talking entirely,” he explained. “On purpose.”
