I saw it for what it was.

It was defiance.

It was a small human being refusing, against all the evidence, to stop believing that love was possible.

And I decided, holding her, that I was going to be the person who finally proved her right.

I did not say any of this out loud in the hallway, of course.

To the social worker I must have looked like an ordinary man holding a baby a little too long, saying nothing.

But inside me, in those first minutes, an entire argument was being settled, the argument I had been having with myself for nine years about what my life was for.