I buried myself in work, he took up fishing, and we learned how to exist in our too-quiet house without naming what was missing.
The first time I noticed the shift, we were walking past a playground near our house when Joshua suddenly stopped.
“Look at them,” he said, watching the kids climb and shout. “Remember when we thought that’d be us?”
“Yeah,” I answered.
He didn’t look away. “Does it still bother you?”
I studied his face. There was something raw there—something I hadn’t seen in years.
A few days later, he slid his phone and an adoption brochure across the breakfast table.
“Our house feels empty, Hanna,” he said. “I can’t pretend it doesn’t. We could do this. We could still have a family.”
Continue on the next page:
