She jumped off the couch and squeezed herself between us at the table.
“Jace says you picked us,” I told her.
Josie nodded like it was the most obvious thing in the world.
“Why?”
She immediately pointed toward her brother.
“You talked to him.”
I almost laughed.
“That was all?”
Josie frowned at me as though I was missing something extremely important.
“Everybody talks to me,” she explained. “They play with me and give me snacks.”
Then her expression became serious.
“But they don’t talk TO Jace. They talk ABOUT Jace.”
Jace lowered his eyes.
“What did they say?” I asked gently.
Josie answered without hesitation.
“They ask if he’s bad. Or if he gets angry. Or if he could live somewhere else.”
Jace’s jaw tightened.
“One lady said she wanted me,” Josie continued, “but her house was too small for Jace.”
Jace spoke quietly.
“After that, Josie wouldn’t talk to her anymore.”
Josie shrugged.
“She didn’t want my brother.”
There was something almost startling about the certainty in her voice.
She leaned against Jace.
“So I stopped caring if people were nice to me.”
Daniel swallowed.
“What did you care about?”
Josie looked directly at him.
“If they were nice to Jace.”
Then she turned toward me.
“You asked him what he wanted for dinner.”
She looked at Daniel.
“And you talked to him about basketball.”
Suddenly, I remembered Jace’s surprised expression when I asked him what food he liked during that first meeting.
And I remembered Josie sitting nearby, watching everything.
She wrapped both arms around Jace’s waist.
“Everybody wanted me,” she said.
Then she looked at Daniel and me.
“But I only wanted somebody who wanted him just as much.”
For a moment, none of us spoke.
I could barely breathe.
Then I looked at Jace.
There was still one question I needed answered.
“If Josie chose us and you told Rebecca you wanted to come here…”
I hesitated.
“Why haven’t you unpacked?”
Jace became very still.
Finally, he said,
“Because people change their minds.”
Daniel leaned closer.
“We weren’t going to.”
Jace looked at him.
“You know that now.”
Daniel stopped.
Jace lowered his eyes again.
“People always want her at first,” he explained. “Sometimes they think they can handle having me too. Then eventually they get tired of me being there.”
My throat tightened.
“So I figured I’d wait.”
“For what?” I asked.
This time, he looked directly at me.
“For the moment you decided you didn’t want me anymore.”
The hardest part wasn’t the words.
It was how calmly he said them.
He wasn’t trying to make us feel guilty.
He wasn’t accusing us.
He was simply describing something he had learned to expect.
And suddenly, those packed bags no longer looked like luggage.
They looked like protection.
Armor.
A way to make sure he could leave quickly when the adults changed their minds again.
I wanted to tell him we never would.
That he was safe.
