I filled a pantry.

I did not know their sizes or their favorite colors or whether Josie still used a crib, because I had not been allowed to know my own brother’s children, and I had to call Paulette and ask her things an uncle should have known, and every question was a small confession of the years I’d lost, and I asked all of them anyway, because I was done, finally and completely done, letting my pride or my politeness cost those kids one more thing.

Chapter 4 — The First Day

They came on a gray afternoon in a county car, and Paulette walked them up my driveway, one on each hand, and I stood in my open front door and looked at my brother’s children for the first time in three years and had to hold the frame to stay standing.