The refrigerator opening constantly.
Music playing too loudly behind bedroom doors.
My voice calling, “Turn that down!”
Now I heard only the refrigerator humming.
The clock ticking.
My own footsteps moving through rooms built for a family that no longer lived there.
Every year, the silence seemed to grow louder.
Eventually, I couldn’t live inside it anymore.
That was why, on a rainy Tuesday morning, I walked into a foster care agency and told a woman named Denise that I wanted to become a parent again.
—
Denise didn’t immediately smile.
I had expected warmth.
Instead, she studied me carefully from across her crowded desk.
“Before we continue,” she said, “I need to ask you something difficult.”
“Okay.”
“Are you trying to replace your children?”
The question hurt.
Not because it was cruel.
Because it was exactly the question I had been afraid to ask myself.
Did wanting another child mean I was trying to fill the spaces Grace and Noah had left behind?
