I avert my eyes. “Not yet.”

My dad comes back in, stirring Jonah’s crushed medications into a little container of applesauce. “I like Sam a lot. She seems mature and thoughtful. And that drawing she did for Jonah . . . She’s a keeper.”

I flinch a little, as I always do at that word. A keeper. Another thing my dad doesn’t understand. To an adoptee, the word keeper is loaded. Relinquished children were not “keepers.” I was not a “keeper.” It goes to the Theory of Original Defectiveness.

But now there’s Sam’s counter theory — the belief that I was not defective at all, that in fact someone loved me enough to do the impossible. If she’s right, maybe somewhere out there my birth mother has the same agonized feelings about the phrase keeper as I do. The thought fills my heart with pain and hope in equal measure.

Jonah has made his way back to the living room, and he’s clutching the bird poster again. I swallow a lump in my throat. “You’ll bring that back to Little Lambs Village, right?”

My dad glances over at Jonah and says in a low voice, “It might come in handy for coaxing him into the car. I’m a little worried about that.”

I fill with dread at the idea of Jonah not wanting to go back. If he flops down and refuses to go — or, worse, cries — it will be unbearable for all of us. And it seems perfectly reasonable that after a relaxing weekend of good food and cake and lots of love, he might not want to leave.

This is all so brutal. So fucking brutal.

All afternoon, thoughts and worries about Sam fill my head. I wish she’d reach out. I don’t know if hearing from me would just make her feel worse. But I also don’t want her to think I’m upset with her.

I lie on my bed, chewing on it for a while, before I finally fire off a message: Sam, everything is okay, okay? Can we talk?

Nothing.

The whole day passes without a word from her. I’m still watching and hoping for a response when Cammie pulls into the driveway early that evening to go to the play and then Erin’s.

Happy fucking birthday to me.

I flip off my light and start down the hall, but no sooner do I reach the stairs when I realize I forgot my overnight bag.

I go back to my room, and something pops out at me before my hand even reaches the light switch.

Something is different.

My glow stars. They aren’t the way they were, the way they’ve been for years. I blink, taking in the new pattern on the wall across from me.

The message glows bright in the dark room: I YOU.

My breath catches and the ache in my chest sharpens.

Oh, Sam.