Chapter 3: What He Had Been Carrying
I still had the phone pressed to my ear.
The foster mother was still on the line — I could hear her breathing.
Jace looked at me for a long moment.
Then he crossed the room, pulled out a chair at the kitchen table, and sat down like he had been waiting for this exact moment his entire life.
"Tell her I'll explain," he said.
"She doesn't need to."
I brought the phone back to my mouth.
"He says he'll explain it himself."
A long pause.
Then: "Okay.
But call me after.
Please."
The line went quiet.
I set the phone on the table between us.
"Start from the beginning," I said.
Jace folded his hands.
He was sixteen, but in that moment he looked both younger and much, much older.
"Our mom used to talk about you," he said.
"Not you specifically.
But she talked about a couple she knew — a woman named Claire and her husband.
She said they were the kindest people she'd ever met.
She said if anything ever happened to her, she wished we could end up with someone like them."
My chest tightened.
"Jace—"
"Let me finish." He wasn't rude.
He was careful.
Like he'd rehearsed this and didn't want to lose his place.
"She passed away when Josie was one.
I was thirteen.
After that, it was foster homes.
Some were okay.
Most weren't." He paused.
"When the agency started showing us potential families, I asked if I could see the files.
They said no.
So I found another way."
"What other way?"
He looked at the table.
"The caseworker left her laptop open once.
I had about four minutes."
I didn't speak.
"I went through every family on the list.
I looked them up online.
Most of them — I could tell right away they wanted Josie and not me.
The way the notes were written.
The questions they asked.
I'd seen it before." His jaw tightened.
"So I made sure those families found reasons to walk away before I had to watch them choose her and leave me behind again."
"You turned them down first."
"Yes."
"And then you found us."
He nodded slowly.
"Your name came up in a search I did on one of the other families.
You'd left a comment on a community board about a fundraiser for a foster care nonprofit.
It was nothing.
Just a small thing.
But I looked you up anyway."
I waited.
"And I found the obituary," he said.
The word landed between us like something heavy dropped on the floor.
"Whose obituary?" I asked, though something in my stomach already knew.
Jace looked up at me.
His eyes were steady, but his hands — his folded, careful hands — had gone completely still.
"Your sister's," he said.
"Claire Mercer.
She passed four years ago.
The obituary said she was survived by her husband and her two adopted children."
The kitchen was very quiet.
"Our mom talked about a Claire," he said softly.
"And when I saw that name — your last name, your sister — I thought maybe it wasn't a coincidence.
Maybe it was the closest thing to what she wanted for us that I was ever going to find."
My throat closed.
I hadn't spoken my sister Claire's name out loud in four years.
And this boy — this sixteen-year-old who had been rejected by family after family, who had taught himself to leave before he could be left — had found her name in an obituary and followed it all the way to my front door.
"Jace," I managed.
"Did you know for certain?
That we were connected to her?"
He shook his head.
"No.
I just knew you felt right." He looked down again.
"I know that probably sounds strange."
"It doesn't," I said.
And I meant it.
I heard small footsteps in the hallway.
Josie appeared in the doorway in her socks, holding the stuffed rabbit she'd named Benny.
She looked at Jace, then at me, then at the phone on the table.
"Is everything okay?" she asked.
Jace looked at her.
Something in his face softened completely.
"Yeah, Jo," he said.
"I think it might actually be okay."
But I was already reaching for my phone to call my husband.
Because there was something Jace didn't know yet.
May you like
Something about Claire.
Something that changed everything he thought he understood about why he had found us.
