Standing in that hospital hallway, the decision was simply already made, had made itself somewhere between the porch and that moment, and all I was doing when I told Clara Higgins they were coming home with me was reading aloud a conclusion my heart had reached without consulting me.

People asked me later whether I hesitated — a bachelor, a contractor, no experience with children, suddenly the sole parent of a six-year-old and a three-year-old with a hard road ahead.

And the honest answer is that I didn’t, and not because I’m some kind of saint, but because there was nothing to hesitate about.

They were Thomas’s.

They were my brother’s children, and my brother was gone, and they had walked seven blocks to my door because mine was the one they trusted, and there is no version of me that hands that trust to a stranger and goes back to my quiet evenings.

It would have been a betrayal of everything I am, and everything Thomas was to me.