First & Then by Emma Mills

Author:Emma Mills
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781627795210
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. (BYR)

19

I threw my bag down inside the kitchen door that night and bellowed, “I’m home!”

My words were swallowed up in the depths of the house. The place felt empty. The lights were off. I was alone.

Or so I thought.

“Devon?” My mom appeared in the doorway. Her expression was serious, and it stopped me in my tracks on the way to the fridge in the pursuit of post–road trip snacks.

“What is it?”

“Come to Daddy’s office. We need to talk.”

Dad’s office was on the ground floor. It had a big picture window looking out over the backyard. I stared out into the darkness as my mom took a seat and my dad, already behind the desk, shuffled a few papers.

“What is it?” I asked again. A gnawing feeling grew in my stomach. I tried to smile.

There had been a conversation like this before, in which they first proposed the idea of Foster coming to live with us. Only that time we were in the living room, and there were cookies, and something about my parents’ demeanor was vastly different. My mom was staring out the window now, her arms folded in front of her, her lips pursed. She looked … sad.

Dad spoke. “You know that when we agreed to take Foster, we did it on the assumption that this was a … a temporary situation. We’re Foster’s godparents, but his mom still has the legal right to decide what’s best for him, whether it be staying here or going back to live with her.”

All at once, the bottom of my stomach dropped out, and this awful, terrible rush of blood swelled from the back of my neck to my cheeks, up through the top of my head. Foster couldn’t go back there. Foster would implode there.

In an instant, in the tiniest head of the smallest pin, I was concentrated like Ezra. I was ready to fight for Foster.

And then my father spoke again. “We’ve been in contact with Elizabeth, and with Foster’s social worker, and”—he took a deep breath—“honey, Elizabeth’s surrendered her rights as Foster’s mother. She’s going to let us adopt him.”

“Adopt?”

“Yes. Adopt.”

Adopt. Adopt. Adopt. If you say any word enough, eventually it loses all meaning.

I blinked, and the only thing I could think to ask was, “Does he know?” After Dad answered yes, I sort of lost the ability to concentrate. My mind was going in too many directions.

I closed the office door softly behind me and climbed the stairs to my room, my parents’ reassurances still floating around in my head and that adopt still pounding in my ears. My heart was racing, and each beat said the same thing.

I was relieved. I was hopelessly relieved, but at the same time, so incredibly pissed off. I hated Elizabeth, and I hated the world, too, because if I was meant to have a brother, why couldn’t I have gotten him the normal way? None of this was right. If I was going to have a brother, I didn’t want him just because Elizabeth was a fucking coward.

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