As weeks turned into months, the house began to shift. Not loudly, not all at once, but in ways that mattered. Aaron started sitting closer to me when we watched television. He waited by the door when I went outside to check the mail. When I caught a cold and spent a day in bed, I woke to find a glass of water on the nightstand and my book placed within reach.
“Thank you,” I said, not knowing if he would accept the words.
He paused in the doorway, then gave the smallest nod.
People asked questions they thought were harmless.
“Has he said anything yet?”
“Do you think he ever will?”
“Isn’t it hard, not knowing?”
I learned to answer without defensiveness.
“He communicates all the time,” I would say. “He just does it differently.”
What I did not say was that his silence felt familiar. I understood it. I had lived inside my own version of it for years.
The paperwork for adoption arrived on a rainy afternoon when the sky hung low and gray, and I let the envelope sit unopened for hours before finally bringing it to the kitchen table. I did not want to scare him. I did not want him to think this was another arrangement that could disappear if he made the wrong move.