They Were About to Split Up Five Kids Under Seven. The One Man Willing to Take All Five Knew Exactly What That Does to a Child

Holt.

It still catches me sometimes, hearing it read out at a school office, five kids and me and one name.

The day the adoption finalized, the judge — a different one, a woman, but she’d read the file — asked each of the children in turn, in the gentle way they do it, whether they wanted this to be permanent, whether they wanted to be a Holt.

The older ones said yes right away.