Chapter 2 - What the Meatloaf Couldn't HideThen, exactly two weeks later, Callum came to dinner and barely touched his own meatloaf. That scared me considerably more than it probably should have. He genuinely loved meatloaf.

"Sweetheart?" I reached across the table and touched his hand gently.

"I'm fine."

"Terrible lie."

His fork scraped uselessly against his plate. He was trembling. "And you'll probably wish you'd never actually adopted me."

"Callum."

He pulled away from me, eyes filling with sudden tears. "Mom, I need to tell you something." My own fork slipped straight out of my fingers. My stomach dropped hard. "Callum, what happened?"

He looked genuinely terrified. Then he whispered, "I have a sister."

"Your file said you didn't have any siblings placed alongside you."

"She's not actually placed with me."

Callum explained that the two of them had entered foster care together, years earlier, back when Willa was still quite little. Her name was Willa. She was nine years old now. He'd made her breakfast every morning. Gotten her ready for school. Helped with her homework. Whenever she woke up scared at night, she'd come looking for him specifically.

Then a family had eventually offered Willa a permanent home. "They didn't have room for me too," Callum said. "I was fourteen at the time. They kept asking me what I genuinely thought was best for her."

"Who told you that?" I asked, feeling anger rising fast inside me.

"Everybody did. They all said Willa deserved real stability."

"And you agreed to it?"

He laughed bitterly. "I was fourteen years old. They kept asking me what was best for her. So I said yes."

After that separation, Callum had begun quietly sabotaging his own placements. Not dramatically, exactly. He never once turned violent. He simply learned, over time, how to make people give up on him first. "I'd stop talking entirely," he explained. "On purpose."

"Mostly. Sometimes I just genuinely didn't feel like talking anymore." "What else did you do?" "Refuse outings. Stay locked in my room. Say things I already knew would hurt them." "Why, though?" His chin shook. "Because if I got adopted somewhere else eventually, Willa might genuinely think I'd chosen another family over her."

Suddenly, those ten previous placements looked completely different to me. Once, when a foster mother had started discussing permanent guardianship with him, he'd packed his bags before she could even finish the sentence. "I wanted to leave first," he explained. "Because leaving hurts considerably less, when you're the one who actually decides when it happens."

Then he said the part that genuinely broke me apart. "I was going to do the exact same thing to you."

I turned back toward him. "What?"

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"When I first moved in, I actually had a plan. Give it a couple months. Then start acting different on purpose." "But you didn't." Tears ran freely down his face now. "I messed up completely." Despite everything, I very nearly laughed. "Then I started loving you instead," he said. "How?" "I liked being here with you." He covered his own face with both hands. "I called you Mom without even meaning to. Then the adoption actually happened, and everybody around me seemed genuinely happy, and all I could think about was that Willa would end up hating me for it."

I moved around the table and sat down right beside him. "You should have told me sooner." "I know." "But you are not going anywhere at all. You're my son now. Adoption was never some kind of trial period." His shoulders finally collapsed with relief.