I adopted Ethan when he was three years old.

The first time I saw him, he was sitting on the floor of a children’s home outside Austin with a plastic truck missing one wheel.

He didn’t smile at me.

He didn’t speak.

He simply watched while I talked to the social worker, his huge brown eyes following every movement I made.

I was thirty-one, unmarried, and working six days a week at a stationery shop.

I wasn’t wealthy.

I didn’t have a grand house or impressive family connections.

What I did have was a spare bedroom, steady work, and more love than I knew what to do with.

After almost an hour, I stood to leave.

That was when Ethan suddenly ran across the room and caught the hem of my skirt.

“You’re not leaving too, are you?” he whispered.

Something inside me broke open.

I knelt in front of him.

“I have to go home tonight,” I said carefully.

“But if everything works out, I’m going to keep coming back.”

He studied my face as though trying to determine whether adults could ever be trusted.

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

Months later, Ethan came home with me permanently.

From that moment forward, every decision in my life seemed to carry his name.

I worked overtime when school fees increased.

I sold tamales on weekends because the private reading specialist his teacher recommended wasn’t covered by insurance.

When he needed surgery at eleven, I sold the earrings my mother had left me.

When he was accepted into university, I cried harder than he did.

When tuition exceeded what his scholarship covered, I refinanced my little home.

Ethan knew some of these things.

He did not know all of them.

Parents rarely give their children an itemized receipt for love.

And for most of his life, I never wanted him to feel indebted to me.

I wanted him to feel free.

He became ambitious.

Smart.

Polished.

He entered consulting, learned how to speak to executives, traded discount-store shirts for tailored suits, and eventually moved to California.

I was proud of him.

Then he met Vanessa.

Vanessa came from a family that treated social standing like another form of currency.

She was beautiful, educated, and always perfectly composed.

At first, I tried hard to like her.

The first time she visited my apartment, I cooked Ethan’s favorite chicken soup.

She tasted one spoonful and laughed.

“It smells like one of those sad little cafés downstairs.”

Ethan heard her.

He smiled awkwardly instead of correcting her.

That moment should have warned me.

There were others.

Vanessa joked about my old car.

She asked Ethan why I still worked at the stationery shop when he was supposedly doing so well.

Once, at dinner, I reached across the table and squeezed his cheek the way I had since childhood.

He pulled away quickly.

“Mom, don’t do that in public.”

I laughed because I didn’t know what else to do.

After that, my phone calls started going unanswered.

Holiday visits became shorter.

When Ethan and Vanessa became engaged, I discovered it at what I had been told was Ethan’s birthday lunch.

Vanessa arrived wearing a diamond ring and spent half the meal angling her hand toward the light.

I congratulated them.

Later I asked Ethan why he hadn’t told