When the Eight-Year-Old Boy We Were Adopting Came Home With Everything He Owned in a Black Bag—Then My Missing Brother’s Watch Fell Onto His Bed

He nodded.

“Sounds bad.”

“It often is.”

He smiled.

Progress.

The agency’s legal department obtained the name-change order two days later.

David Michael Mercer had petitioned to become Daniel Michael Reed eleven years earlier in Oregon.

I sat at our kitchen table staring at the document.