Tentacles

22

I brought out my laptop and set it on my lap, in between Hailey and I so the both of us could look. I pulled up a local adoption website and squeezed her hand in mine.

Adoption wasn't what I had wanted.

I would've preferred a sperm donor, but beggars can't be choosers.

My father was adopted. Put into foster care. I guess that was the broken wire in the console board; never having a family to rely on, never having a mother to teach you manners, never having a father to teach you how to shave. I can imagine it was hard.

But I felt it too.

I felt it in the way he would whisk my mother away whenever we really needed her. The way he dulled her personality.

The way he took my sister.

I never mentioned I had a therapist now. She made talking about things easier. She was the one that made me realize that my father was abusive. I guess I had never really realized it before.

And I stared, I looked at all those children with smiling faces, wondering which one will become my dad, which one will abuse their children.

We were going to stop by. See if they had any babies.

But later. Later in the week, we said. But later never existed.