He stood in that doorway and watched his wife take his mother down an exterior staircase, and he did not come out, and he did not say one word, and that — more than the bed, more than eight months, more than any of it — is the image that finally made the decision for me.

Not the betrayal.

The stillness.

Part Five: Why I Covered Her Eyes

Chloe Bellagio came into that family when she was fourteen and I was twenty-three.

Marcus — Wendy’s younger brother — and his wife Patricia had spent eleven years trying for a child and had finally gone through the state, and had been matched with a girl who had been in three placements in five years and who arrived at their house in September with everything she owned in a duffel bag and a plastic tote.

She was not related to any of us by blood.