Then a family offered Emma a permanent home.
“They didn’t have room for me,” Luke said.
I felt something tighten in my chest.
“I was fourteen. They kept asking what I thought was best for her.”
“Who told you that?”
“Everybody. They said Emma deserved stability.”
“And you agreed?”
“I was fourteen.”
He looked down.
“I thought I was doing what I was supposed to do.”
After Emma was separated from him, everything changed.
Luke began sabotaging his placements.
Not dramatically.
He never became violent.
He didn’t attack anyone.
He simply learned how to make people give up.
“I’d stop talking,” he told me.
“On purpose?”
“Mostly. Sometimes I just didn’t feel like talking anymore.”
“What else?”
“Refuse outings. Stay in my room. Say stuff I knew would hurt them.”
“Why?”
He looked at me.
“Because if I got adopted somewhere else, Emma might think I chose another family over her.”
Suddenly, those ten placements looked completely different.
I thought about every family that had probably looked at his file and wondered what was wrong with him.
But Luke hadn’t been trying to destroy homes.
He had been trying to make sure nobody could ever say he had abandoned Emma.
Once, when a foster mother started talking about permanent guardianship, Luke packed his bags before she could even finish the conversation.
“How many families did you push away?” I asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Luke.”
“Most.”
“Why?”
He looked down.
“Because leaving hurts less when you decide when it happens.”
That sentence stayed with me.
Then he told me something even worse.
“I wanted to leave first.”
“Why?”
