I had already decided.

Standing in that hallway, before I ever opened the folder, before I read a single word of what made her mine by blood, I had already crossed the line in my heart.

The collar, the weight of her, the open unafraid face, the fourteen months and the number nineteen, all of it had already done its work, and if the second page had said nothing remarkable at all, if she had been a stranger’s child with no connection to me whatsoever, I believe, I truly believe, that I would still have found my way to adopting her.

What the file gave me was not the reason.