He picked up his leather baseball glove and proudly set it back on its oak shelf next to two little stuffed bears sitting by his pillow.

“Are those little bears for Hailey and Mason?” I asked, noticing the tiny blue and pink ribbons tied around their necks.

“Yeah, I bought them with my own allowance before the babies were born, but I forgot to give them to you because everything got so scary,” he mumbled.

He picked up the little brown bear and turned it over and over in his hands before looking up at me with one last, crushing question.

“Mom, if you’d had the twins first, would you still have wanted to adopt me?” he asked.