“What?”
“Nothing.”
He shrugged.
Eventually, we started talking seriously about adoption.
One afternoon, Luke looked at me across a table and asked, “You’d really want that?”
“Yes.”
“Permanent?”
“Yes.”
He looked away.
“What if I mess it up?”
“Then we’d deal with whatever you messed up.”
He was quiet for several seconds.
“What if you regretted it?”
“No.”
I paused.
“Then I’d be an adult having a feeling. You’d still be my kid.”
Luke kept his eyes on the table.
“You make everything sound simple.”
“No,” I told him. “I make commitment sound simple.”
That was different.
When Luke finally moved into my house, he treated everything as though he were borrowing it.
He made his bed before breakfast.
He washed his plate immediately after eating.
He folded towels without being asked.
He never left his shoes in the hallway.
He never took more food than he thought he was supposed to.
It was as if he was constantly trying to prove he could be easy to have around.
The first Saturday morning, I nearly tripped over a loose porch step.
Luke appeared with a screwdriver in his hand.
“How long has this been like this?”
“A couple of years.”
He stared at me.
“You’ve been walking on this?”
“I enjoy danger.”
“You’re ridiculous.”
A few minutes later, he was repairing the step.
That was Luke.
He didn’t just notice things.
He fixed them.
A month later, something happened that neither of us expected.
Luke called me “Mom” by accident.
“Mom, have you seen my charger?”
