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“Me either. And we didn’t even know each other that well. It was refreshing. And it gave me something to look forward to. I started to think, imagine how it will be when I really know her and she knows me. I couldn’t fathom something so meaningful at the time. But I wanted to. I still want to.”
Jeni curved her hand around his thigh. “You’ve learned a lot about me these past few months. But I still feel like there’s so much I don’t know about you.”
He pressed his lips together. “I know. I’m not good at talking about myself, especially my childhood.” He covered her hand with his. “You already know more than anyone else, if it helps.”
“Will you tell me more?”
“Sure.”
She watched him, waiting expectantly.
He frowned. “What, right now?”
“Why not? I don’t want to push you, but I want to know everything about you too. Even if it’s not pretty.”
Logan tilted his neck to the side, like he was stretching the muscles there. He inhaled deeply, as if preparing for a difficult conversation. “Okay.”
His right knee bobbed up and down, and Jeni lightly squeezed his thigh. He stilled.
“I’m not really sure where to start.”
She slid her thumb back and forth across the denim. “I can ask questions. Would that make it easier?”
“Maybe.”
“Why did you enter the foster care system?”
“My mom was a meth addict.”
Only six words, but they said enough. “Is she still alive?”
“No.”
“What was your life like before they took you from her?”
“We moved around a lot, living with whatever man she’d tied herself to. I have no idea who my biological dad is. I don’t think she did either. Some of the men were okay, but others were mean as hell. Some hit me. When I was six, we ended up in this government assistance apartment complex. We lived there over a year, longer than we’d ever stayed anywhere else. There was an older lady named Paula who lived in the apartment next door to us. She was nice to me and let me come over when Mom was messed up or when she had men over. She fed me and let me watch cartoons and stuff. One day, my mom left me home alone, and I went to Paula’s. My mom never came back. Paula let me stay with her and told the apartment manager she was my grandmother. That put off any questions for the time being.”
“Was that the last time you saw your mom?”
“Yeah. They found her body a few weeks later. I would have stayed with Paula until she or someone else made me leave, but one night she died in her sleep. I was so freaked out that I just sat in the corner of her living room, her dead body in the next room, until someone found us. We didn’t have any family that I knew of, so that’s when I went in the system.”
Tears burned beneath Jeni’s lids, but she tried to keep them contained. “I’m so sorry. You were so young to have gone through so much.”
She scooted closer, but he just sat there, unmoving.
“I moved through several foster families. I tried really hard to be a good kid. To do good in school and not fight when there were several of us in the home at once. That didn’t always work out, but I so badly wanted to just find somewhere to stay and someone who wanted to keep me. It was all I thought about.”
I want to keep you. Jeni swallowed the lump in her throat, and several tears escaped. She understood so much now.
His interest in social media. He’d been deprived meaningful human connection until he was adopted.
His sparsely decorated house. He’d moved a lot and learned to keep few possessions.
His lack of childhood friends. Probably didn’t stay in one place long enough to make them.
“When I was thirteen, Sandra placed me in Ingrid and Robert’s home. I know now she’d handpicked them for me. After six months, they asked if I wanted to be a permanent member of their family.” His voice wavered. “I can’t even explain how that felt. I’ll never be able to repay them for what they did for me.”
“It wasn’t one sided. They gained a pretty wonderful son out of the deal.”
