“You’re really here to tell me I gained something?”
Noah stared at it like it might disappear.
“My whole life,” he said slowly, “people in suits showed up to move me or tell me I’d lost something.”
He looked at Thomas. “You’re really here to tell me I gained something?”
Thomas smiled faintly. “Yes.”
He left his card, told us to find our own lawyer if we wanted, and let himself out.
For a long time, we didn’t say anything.
The door clicked shut, and the apartment fell quiet.
For a long time, we didn’t say anything.
Our whole lives had been built around the idea that nothing good stayed.
This felt like a glitch in the universe.
“I helped him pick up groceries,” Noah said finally. “That’s it.”
We went to see the house a few weeks later.
“You saw him,” I said.
“Everyone else walked around him. He noticed.”
Noah looked down at the letter, then at our peeling walls and crooked blinds.
“He really did mean it,” he whispered.
We went to see the house a few weeks later.
Inside, it smelled like dust and old coffee.
It was small and solid, with a ramp up to the front door and a scraggly tree in the yard.
Inside, it smelled like dust and old coffee.
There were photos on the walls, books on the shelves, dishes in the cabinets.
A
real home
, the kind people grow up in and come back to for holidays.
Noah rolled into the living room and turned in a slow circle.
Growing up, nobody chose us.
“I don’t know how to live in a place that can’t just… disappear on me,” he admitted.
I walked over, put my hand on his shoulder, and felt the weight of everything behind us and everything in front of us.
“We’ll learn,” I said. “We’ve learned harder things.”
Growing up, nobody chose us. No one looked at the scared girl or the boy in the wheelchair and said, “That one. I want that one.”
