I signed.
My mother lifted Kieran out of my arms like a casserole dish off a rack.
“It’s for the best,” she said.
Then they carried him out, and the door sighed shut on its hinge.
I have never been able to smell antiseptic and warm milk together since without my hands going cold.
My parents told me he was going to a good family in Arizona.
That was all I was allowed to know.
I moved to Dayton that week, with a duffel bag and a job at a laundromat.
And for thirty-one years, I looked for my son.
I wrote to every agency in Arizona.
I filled out mutual-consent registry forms every few years, in blue ink, pressing so hard the pen went through.
I hired a private investigator named Ivan Kessel, then another one, and paid them with money I didn’t have.
Every door closed the same way.
