But I have never been able to look at the sequence of that morning and call it entirely chance.

It felt, and still feels, like being handed something.

Like a door I had not known was there quietly opening, and a voice I could not hear saying, go through.

Chapter 2 — No to What

Greg spun the coffee cup twice more before he answered me, and when he did, his voice dropped low, the way people’s voices drop when they are ashamed of something they are not sure they should be ashamed of.

“She has Down syndrome,” he said.

“We agreed to it at first.

We’d been on the waiting list a long time, and when they called, we said yes before we’d even seen the file.

And then we reviewed the file, and there was the diagnosis, and we just couldn’t.

We talked about it for a week.

My wife cried.

But in the end, we couldn’t.” He finally looked up at me.

“I don’t know if that makes us bad people.

I’ve been trying to decide for a month.”