They just did not matter.

Some things you do not decide so much as recognize, the way you recognize your own name, and I had recognized, in a county hallway at midday, the central fact of the rest of my life.

Chapter 14 — I Am Her Uncle

The social worker had returned to her desk during the call, and she was looking at me now with an expression of dawning, cautious astonishment, having heard, I realized, my half of a conversation that had ended with the word adopting and a great many references to a name that matched the one on her own sealed intake sheet.

“I’m sorry,” she said carefully.