“They made it sound like loving her meant letting her go.

Like if I really cared about her, I’d want her to have the family I couldn’t give her.

So I said yes.

I said she should go.

I thought — I thought I was doing the right thing for her.

I thought that was what a good brother does.”

He had been made the author of his own abandonment.

They had taken a loyal, frightened boy and convinced him that the loving thing was to sign away the one person in the world who was his, and then, I would learn, they had wondered why he came apart afterward.