He told me the first story in pieces because my breathing kept changing and the monitor beside the bed objected whenever I tried to sit forward.

His adoptive parents were Daniel and Ruth Bennett, a couple who had spent almost a decade hoping to have a child.

Daniel taught history at a community college.

Ruth repaired musical instruments in a shop behind their house.

They lived in a brick bungalow in a town I had driven through countless times while searching the state for traces of my son.

“They were good people,” Tobias said carefully.