(Dane)
I thought about it long after the afternoon had settled into evening.
Not in a bad way. Just in the way things sat with me when they mattered enough to stay in my head past the point where I could reasonably do anything about them.
The adoption conversation had been coming for a long time. I'd known that. We'd both known it. The house had made it real in a way that talking about it never had. There was a room sitting empty in that house right now with good light and enough space for a child and neither of us had been saying what it was for because saying it out loud made it possible to lose.
But Cassidy had said it today.
Out loud. Clearly. Without flinching.
That was her.
She always did the hard thing first when she'd finally decided it needed doing. Years of watching her an
