He shook his head, removing his hands to cross his forearms over his chest. “I sent some things to Cheryl—boys’ clothes and toiletries, that kind of stuff. He didn’t even have a second pair of shoes. It doesn’t feel like enough.”
“Would anything feel like enough?” I asked.
“Only the obvious.” He scrubbed his jaw, glancing out the window over the sink. He’d finished the stable long ago, but we’d shifted our focus right from dogs to babies and hadn’t talked about getting a horse in a long time. Too much to handle—and yet here we were, discussing a nine-year-old boy.
Nine was terribly young—Maddy’s age when she’d passed.
“What is it?” I prompted. “What’s the obvious solution?”
He turned back to me, his eyes narrowed in thought. He struggled with whatever was running through his mind. “I want to help. More than that,” he admitted. “I want to . . . meet him.”
Though I’d half-expected him to say it, it took my mind a moment to catch up. Manning and I could help financially from a distance. That meant there was really only one reason to meet Mateo. “And what if he’s a good kid? Like you were?” I asked. I tried to hide the emotion in my voice so Manning could make this decision on his own, but I suspected he saw through me. “What if he’s being punished for doing the right thing?”
He hesitated. “Then I’m not sure I can stand by and let it happen. If that means adoption, then I guess that’s what I want. Maybe it’s selfish of me to ask that of you with everything we have going on.”
I inhaled a deep breath. It was no small thing, what he was suggesting. I didn’t know the right response, if one even existed, but I couldn’t think of a time in recent history when Manning had been selfish. I’d tried to get him to be, actually, and he never was—which was how I knew this was important to him.
If I’d had the opportunity to save Manning years ago, either from his sister’s death or from his prison sentence, I wouldn’t have hesitated a moment. It was possible I wanted this, too—I wasn’t sure. But Manning had asked for it, and I at least owed him my support until we learned more.
He cinched his brows, watching me. “What are you thinking?”
I held his gaze a few moments, his brown eyes torn but full of love. I’d fought hard for that love, for a permanent spot next to him in the universe, and to complete our little triangle. But triangles weren’t the only shapes out there, not even in the sky. “I think we moved our stars, Manning,” I said. “Maybe now, we help rearrange someone else’s.”
Epilogue
A HOT SUMMER DAY, 2018
I waited on the back porch, Mads balanced on my hip, while Henry tied his shoes. He had a very particular method of looping his bunny ears and would not be rushed—my son took after his father that way. Once satisfied, he got up from his knee and took my hand even though we were only going across the yard.
“Okay, Mommy,” he said. “Let’s go.”
I took the kids down the steps and across the grass. Manning had opened all the doors and windows of his workshop, but neither he nor Mateo would’ve noticed a herd of elephants coming. Jimi Hendrix blared on the stereo, and Mateo played a hammer like an electric guitar while Manning sanded down a bedframe.
I whistled and waved until I got Manning’s attention. He shut off the sander and lowered the volume before pushing his goggles onto his head.
As soon as Madison spotted her daddy, she reached for him, practically vaulting out my arms. “She loves you more than me,” I complained as he came over and took her from me.
“What can I say?” He bounced her to “Foxey Lady” and brushed her messy black curls from her face. “I have a way with the ladies.”
I rolled my eyes. “It’s fine,” I said, bending down to squeeze Henry in a hug from behind. “Because this one’s a momma’s boy, aren’t you, sweetheart?”
“Yes, Mom,” he said as if I’d asked him to take out the trash. Henry was my serious little man—he looked just like Manning and acted as if he carried the world on his shoulders. I’d planned to call him Chuckie, the name my dad had gone by as a kid, but Henry had come out of the womb quiet and frowning, and I knew—he was not a Chuckie. Henry Charles Sutter it was, and even though my baby didn’t cry on the day of his birth, both his godfather and grandfather had sure as hell shed tears of joy.
Mateo shuffled out of the workshop, cleaning his hands on a rag. At fourteen, he was taller, and almost skinnier, than me. “Since you’re home today, are you making us lunch?” he asked.