“Do you really want to do this with me?” Silas asked me one afternoon, across a diner table, with a hesitation in his eyes that broke my heart a little, because it was the hesitation of a boy bracing to be disappointed.

“Yes,” I said.

“I really do.”

“You mean permanent.

Actual adoption.

Not a — placement.” He said the word placement the way you say the name of an old injury.

“Yes,” I said. “Permanent. Adoption. For good.”

He looked down at his hands on the table.