“I basically raised her,” he told me.
He made her breakfast.
Helped her get ready for school.
Tried to do her hair.
Helped with homework.
When she woke frightened in the middle of the night, she went looking for Luke.
Not the adults.
Luke.
He had been a child raising another child.
Then, when Luke was fourteen, a family decided they wanted to adopt Emma.
“They were good people,” he said. “Stable. Nice house.”
He stared at the table.
“But they didn’t want me too.”
My stomach tightened.
“What do you mean?”
“They wanted a little girl.”
He gave a shrug that didn’t fool me.
“Not a teenage boy.”
Everyone started asking Luke what he thought would be best for Emma.
Caseworkers.
The prospective parents.
Other adults.
“They kept saying she deserved stability,” Luke whispered. “That she deserved a permanent family.”
He gave a bitter little laugh.
“And then they’d look at me.”
“Like they wanted you to agree?”
He nodded.
“What kind of brother says no when someone offers his little sister a family?”
He was fourteen.
Fourteen.
And adults had somehow convinced him that giving up his sister was a decision he was responsible for making.
“So I said yes,” he whispered.
Then Emma left.
Luke stayed behind.
—NEXT PAGE
“After she was adopted,” he said, “I started ruining my placements.”
I stared at him.
“On purpose?”
He nodded.
“I never hurt anyone. I never broke things. Nothing like that.”
“What did you do?”
“I stopped talking.”
“For how long?”
“Days. Sometimes weeks.”
He also refused outings.
Stayed in his room.
Skipped meals.
Sometimes he deliberately said things he knew would hurt the adults caring for him.
“Why?”
His chin began trembling.
“Because if another family adopted me, Emma might think I chose them instead of her.”
The room became completely still.
Suddenly, the number ten meant something entirely different.
I had always thought ten placements meant ten families had rejected Luke.
Instead, Luke had repeatedly made himself impossible to keep.
Not because he didn’t want a family.
Because he loved his sister so much that accepting one felt like betraying her.
“How many families actually wanted you to stay?” I asked.
He looked away.
“Luke.”
“Most of them.”
I remembered one foster mother Denise had mentioned.
She had talked about permanent guardianship.
Luke packed before she even finished explaining it.
“Why did you leave her?”
