It still looks a bit sterile, the decor all in different shades of cream and beige, but at least it is welcoming. The double bed is piled high with throw pillows in various satins and silks, and the gauzy curtains are pulled back from the window to frame the view of the backyard, and the houses beyond, Avon Mountain visible in the distance, a dark, rugged fringe on the horizon.
“We could unpack your things now,” I suggest, and Dylan hesitates before he nods. “Let me go get your stuff.”
I run down stairs and a few seconds later return with the two backpacks.
Dylan holds his hand out and I give him the Cars one unthinkingly; it’s almost as if we’ve figured out a new language, words formed in silence.
He unzips the backpack and takes out a worn, well-loved rabbit. One ear has been torn off and he fingers the gaping hole on top of the bunny’s head with such a grief-stricken look on his face that my heart feels as if it is twisting and writhing inside me.
“Would you like me to fix that for you?” I ask. I can see the ear is still in the backpack, along with some cotton stuffing, and I can’t bear to think too closely about why it’s like that just now. Did he and his mother—this Beth—fight over the rabbit? Was he distraught when he was being removed from his home, or was she? Was she the one who put it in the backpack, in hopes that his foster mother—me—would sew it back on? “I could sew it,” I suggest. “It would almost be as good as new.”
Dylan stares at me gravely for a few seconds; I can tell he’s deliberating my offer. Then, wordlessly as ever, he holds his rabbit out.
“Okay,” I say. “I’ll get my sewing kit.”
I’m not the world’s craftiest person by any means, but my parents made sure I could do the basic things in life—sew a button, change a tire. Now I sit at the kitchen table and sew as if my life depends on it. Dylan stands behind my shoulder and watches every painstaking stitch.
The last of the day’s sunlight streams through the window, touching everything in gold. The kitchen is quiet, the only sound the snick of my needle and the soft draw of Dylan’s breath. From the oven, I hear the chips sizzle. The moment is so peaceful, so poignant, I want to catch it in my hands, put it in a jar.
Instead, I keep sewing the rabbit’s ear back onto its head, stitch after careful stitch, in and out of its worn softness while Dylan watches.
“There.” I tie the seam off with a bulky knot, the best I can do. The ear flops forward a little, but at least it’s attached. The rabbit is whole again.
I hand it to Dylan and he takes it silently, clutching it to its chest.
“What’s your rabbit’s name?” I ask, but I get no answer.
Still, I’m feeling fragilely optimistic as I get dinner on the table.
Dylan stands by the big granite island and watches, and once again I keep up a cheerful patter. It feels easier now, almost natural.
“Do you like chips? What about ketchup? Emma loves chips, but hates ketchup. Josh has ketchup with everything, even peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.” I make a face to show how disgusting I think that is, but Dylan’s expression is opaque and unchanging. “To be fair,” I allow, bringing the salad to the table, “he stopped dipping his PB and J’s in ketchup a while back.”
“Yeah, like when I was six.” Josh stands in the kitchen doorway, looking more uncertain than I’ve ever seen him as he aims a smile in Dylan’s direction. My heart expands with love.
“I think it was more like seven,” I say. “Dylan’s age!” I look between them both, but as some sort of bonding moment, it passes them right by. “Josh, can you get Dad from his office?”
By the time Nick arrives in the kitchen, we’ve all sat down and, as he joins us, I say grace. I always said grace as a child, and when the kids were little, we did every night, a family ritual, a cozy encircling of hands, a reminder of gratitude.
In the last five years or so, with kids coming in late from sports practice, our family life hectic and disparate, it has fallen by the wayside, except at Thanksgiving and Christmas. Yet for some reason tonight, with a child in the