She was a ward of the state.”

“I was in foster care,” I said.

“That doesn’t mean I had no biological parents.”

It was the first time I had said that sentence without feeling that I was defending a fictional possibility.

Gavin asked permission to sit beside me in the space Marcus indicated.

He did not push through the gate or take over the hearing.

The cane rested against his knee.

“Your mother lost you in a Seattle hospital twenty-four years ago,” he said quietly.