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

The searching had cost me things I didn’t always admit.

Money I could have spent elsewhere, on hopeful services that took a fee and produced a form letter.

Evenings hunched over a laptop after the kids were down, typing my siblings’ baby names into registries as if they’d still be babies, then doing the math and typing the ages they’d be now, guessing at names that had almost certainly been changed by adoption.

A private ache I kept carefully out of view, because I never wanted my five to feel that they weren’t enough — they were more than enough; they were everything — and yet a person can be whole and still have a room in them with the door shut and a light left on inside.