PART 2
Jaden held the brochure in his lap and didn’t move.
Then he asked me, very quietly, the question every adopted child is afraid to ask.
“Are you going to give me back?”
Ben turned around in the driver’s seat. I climbed into the back and pulled Jaden into my arms.
“Never,” I said. “Not ever. You are not something that can be given back. You are our son. Grandma is wrong. Grandma is very, very wrong.”
Ella, who was seven, grabbed the brochure out of his hand, ripped it in half, and threw it on the floor of the car.
“That’s for stupid people,” she said.
For the first time that night, Jaden laughed.
We had Thanksgiving dinner at a diner on the highway. Pancakes and turkey sandwiches. Jaden ordered extra whipped cream. The waitress gave him a free slice of pie when she heard it was his favorite holiday.
On Monday, I called my lawyer.
The lease on my parents’ house was month-to-month. One dollar a month. Giraffe Holdings gave them sixty days’ notice to move out.
My mother called me that night. Screaming.
“How dare you! After everything we’ve done for you!”
“Mom,” I said. “You told my son to eat in a cold car. You handed him a brochure for getting rid of adopted kids. On Thanksgiving.”
“It was a joke!”
“It wasn’t a joke to him.”
I hung up.
Two days later, my father knocked on my front door. Alone.
He looked older than I’d ever seen him.
“Can I talk to the boy?” he asked.
Jaden came out, holding his one-eared giraffe.
My father sat down on my porch steps, right at Jaden’s level.
“I sat there and kept carving that turkey,” he said. “I should have stood up. I should have pulled out a chair for you. I didn’t. That’s on me, and I’m sorry.”
Jaden thought about it for a long time.
“Okay,” he said. “Do you want to see my Lego city?”
They were in his room for two hours.
My mother never apologized.
She and my father moved into a small apartment across town in January. My father comes over every Saturday morning and takes Jaden fishing. He hasn’t missed a week.
My brother and his wife invited us over for Christmas. They put Jaden’s name card right in the middle of the table, between the two cousins he loves most.
I sold the house in the spring. The money went into two college funds. One for Ella. One for Jaden. Exactly the same amount.
This year, Thanksgiving was at our house.
Jaden made the name cards himself. He wrote one for everyone. My father. My brother’s family. Ben’s parents. Our neighbors. Even the waitress from the diner, who actually came and brought pie.
He made one more card, too.
“Grandma Marlys.”
He put it at the end of the table. Just in case.
She didn’t come.
When I asked him why he made it anyway, he shrugged.
“Our family table is for anybody who shows up,” he said.
THE END.
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Family isn’t about blood. It’s about who saves you a seat.
What would you have said to Leah’s mother at that table? Tell us in the replies.