At first, I didn’t know what he meant.
I didn’t know this quiet, thoughtful boy had been carrying a secret heavy enough to shape nearly every decision he had made for years.
And I had no idea that almost everything I thought I knew about his ten failed placements was wrong.
All I knew was that Luke had tears in his eyes.
And I had never seen him look so afraid.
To understand what happened at that table, though, you have to understand how I ended up there.
You have to understand the silence.
Three years before I met Luke, I lost both of my children.
There isn’t a gentle way to write that sentence.
Believe me, I’ve tried.
Grace was fourteen.
Noah was eleven.
Their father had died two years earlier, leaving the three of us to figure out how to become a smaller family.
