She put it on the kitchen table and did not open it and said, “Margaret. Who is Devon?”

I want to describe what happened in my body, because I had not said that name out loud since 2011 and I discovered in about four seconds that I still could not.

I made tea instead. I made an entire pot of tea while she sat there and waited, and she let me, which was a kindness.

Devon Ruiz came to me in March of 2009. He was six. He had been in four placements in fourteen months and he had a thing he did where he stood in doorways rather than rooms, and it took me eleven weeks to get him to sit on furniture.

He was with me for two years and four months.

He was a serious, funny, watchful child who liked facts about weather. He is the reason I have a barometer in my hallway. He is the reason I know what a mackerel sky is.