I picked up a picture of my brother Ed at seven, holding hands with a small blind girl in a yellow dress.
« Friends like that can be a lot of work. »
« You always were the gentle one, » I whispered.
I could still hear him at the dinner table that first night he brought her home, telling our parents, « Mom, Dad, this is my best friend. She can’t see us, so we have to be extra nice with our voices. »
I remembered my mother, Diane, smiling tightly and saying, « That’s very sweet, Edward. But friends like that can be a lot of work. »
Ed hadn’t understood the comment then. I hadn’t either, not really.
« I’m never leaving her behind. »
A few weeks later, when we finally met Lily’s parents at a neighborhood barbecue, they told us the rest. Her biological mother had abandoned her at birth, and Lily’s adoptive parents had taken her in days later. Ed heard that story once, at nine years old, and something in him locked into place.
