Sam crouches down by the box and pulls out a piece of the bright orange racing track.
"You want to race?"
I clip pieces of the track together, and he runs his grubby blue car over the track while making brmm brmm noises. It's good to hear him if not quite speak then at least make noises.
I get the feeling he wants to play on his own, so I retreat to the kitchen.
I send a quick text to Alana telling her how it's going and make a coffee while I wait for her reply.
I let Sam play for a while before showing him the rest of the house.
"Do you want to see your bedroom?"
I pick up the duffle bag and carry it into the spare room that's been transformed into Sam's bedroom. He stands in the center of the room and looks around. He frowns, and I kick myself for letting Avery put up fairy lights and fill the bed with stuffed toys.
"Is this all mine?" he asks in a voice so quiet I have to lean down to hear him.
"Yes, Sam. It's all yours. This is your room now. And all the toys in here are for you."
The frown turns to amazement, and it makes my chest ache. And I wonder again why his mother never contacted Jake. He would have provided for his son.
Sam goes over to the bookcase and picks up the red fire engine sitting on the top shelf. The paint is chipped, and the wheels are smooth from use. It's the same red fire engine that Jake used to play with as a boy. Mom kept some of our favorite toys, and I thought it would be nice for Sam to have them.
"That used to be your dad's."
He frowns at the fire engine and puts it back on the shelf. "I don't have a dad."
The words hit me like a punch in the guts, and I use all my SEAL training not to show how his statement crushes me. The boy, who looks so much like Jake, will never know him.
Sam slips past me out of the bedroom, and a moment later I hear him playing with the cars in the living room.
I pick up the red fire engine and sit on the edge of his bed.
Sam may have a place to live now and a family, but we're all strangers to him. The boy's never known a father. But I can tell he desperately needs one.
Later that night, I'm sitting on the couch with the TV turned down low and a beer in one hand as I talk to Alana on the phone.
"It was a disaster," I whisper, so as not to wake Sam. "He barely said two words to me."
"Give it time, Amos. You're still a stranger to him."
"How do I get to not be a stranger?"
I take a sip of beer. The second one I'm allowing myself with Sam asleep in the house.
"How does anyone go from being a stranger to being a friend?"
I think about Alana, this woman who I didn't know existed three weeks ago and is now the first person I want to call to discuss my day with Sam.
"You get to know them, I guess."
"Exactly. Spend time with him. Don't force it. Once he sees that you're showing up consistently and reliably, he'll come around. He's wary. He doesn’t know what adults he can rely on."
"And he desperately needs an adult he can rely on."
"All kids do," she murmurs.
I lean back on the sofa and let out a long breath, thinking of the little boy on the other side of the wall. When I checked in on him before I called Alana, he was sleeping on his back with one arm thrown over the pillow. His chest rose and fell in a steady rhythm, and the frown lines were gone from his face. The vulnerability of him almost undid me, and I watched him for several minutes before retreating quietly to the living room.
