“Was he violent?” I asked.
I hated asking, but I asked.
“No.”
“Drugs?”
“No.”
“Did he hurt younger children?”
“No. Nothing like that.”
“Then what happened?”
Denise paused.
“Different things.”
Then she said the word I would come to hate.
“Luke is complicated.”
Something sharp rose inside me.
I remembered Noah after his father died.
He had stopped speaking in class.
Teachers who didn’t understand his grief started calling him difficult.
Complicated.
As if a grieving eleven-year-old were an inconvenience.
Over the years, I had learned that adults often call children complicated when the child’s pain makes the adult uncomfortable.
“I still want to meet him,” I said.
Luke stood when I approached him.
That surprised me.
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He was nearly as tall as I was.
“Hi,” I said. “I’m Caroline.”
He gestured toward the empty chair beside him.
“You can sit here, ma’am.”
I smiled.
“I’m forty-seven. Not ninety.”
His mouth twitched.
“I wasn’t implying anything.”
“You absolutely were.”
For the first time, he smiled.
A real smile.
For one second, he stopped looking like a teenage boy attached to a case file.
He just looked like a kid.
“What are you reading?” I asked.
He showed me the cover.
That was all it took.
We talked for nearly an hour.
Luke was smart.
Very smart.
The kind of sharp intelligence adults sometimes find intimidating in teenagers.
He was funny too, but his humor was dry and careful, like something he had developed as protection.
When he talked about characters in books, he talked about them like real people whose decisions mattered.
When I finally stood to leave, I didn’t want to go.
Denise stopped me near the door.
“One good conversation doesn’t guarantee anything.”
“I know.”
“Luke has left ten homes.”
“I know.”
But I knew something else.
I was coming back.
—
And I did.
Again.
And again.
For four months, Luke and I kept meeting.
At first, everything was supervised at the agency.
Then we went to libraries.
Diners.
Parks.
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