“Do you know what adoption means?” she asks.
I shake my head because I’ve never heard of that word.
“Adoption is when someone loves a child so much, that they want them to be their son or daughter. So they adopt them in order to become their mommy or daddy.” She takes my hand and squeezes it. “I love you so much, that I’m going to adopt you so you can be my daughter.”
I smile at her, but I really don’t understand what she means. “Are you coming to live with me and my daddy?”
She shakes her head. “No, sweetie. Your daddy loves you very, very much, but he can’t take care of you anymore. He needs for me to take care of you now, because he wants to make sure you’re happy. So now, instead of living with your daddy, you’re going to live with me and I’ll get to be your mommy.”
It feels like I want to cry, but I don’t know why. I like Karen a lot, but I love my daddy, too. I like her house and I like her cooking and I like my room. I really want to stay here really bad, but I can’t smile because my tummy hurts. It started hurting when she said my daddy couldn’t take care of me anymore. I wonder if I made him mad? I don’t ask if I made him mad, though. I’m scared if she thinks I still want to live with my daddy, that she’ll take me back to live with him. I do love him, but I’m too scared to go back and live with him.
“Are you excited about me adopting you? Do you want to live with me?”
I do want to live with her but I feel sad because it took us lots of minutes or hours to drive here. That means we’re far away from Dean and Lesslie.
“What about my friends? Will I get to see my friends again?”
Karen moves her head to the side and smiles at me, then tucks my hair behind my ear. “Sweetie, you’re going to make a lot of new friends.”
I smile back at her, but my tummy hurts. I don’t want new friends. I want Dean and Lesslie. I miss them. I can feel my eyes burning and I try not to cry. I don’t want her to think I’m not happy about her adopting me, because I am.
Karen reaches down and hugs me. “Sweetie, don’t worry. You’ll see your friends again someday. But right now we can’t go back, so we’ll make new friends here, okay?”
I nod and she kisses me on top of the head while I look down at the bracelet on my hand. I touch the heart on it with my fingers and hope that Lesslie knows where I am. I hope they know I’m okay, because I don’t want them to worry about me.
“There’s one more thing,” she says. “You’re going to love it.”
Karen leans back in her seat and pulls a piece of paper and a pencil to the spot in front of her. “The best part of being adopted is that you get to pick your very own name. Did you know that?”
I shake my head. I didn’t know people got to pick their own names.
“Before we pick your name, we need to know what names we can’t use. We can’t use the name you had before, and we can’t use nicknames. Do you have any nicknames? Anything your daddy calls you?”
I nod my head, but I don’t say it.
“What does he call you?”
I look down at my hands and clear my throat. “Princess,” I say quietly. “But I don’t like that nickname.”
She looks sad when I say that. “Well then, we will never call you Princess again, okay?”
I nod. I’m happy she doesn’t like that name, either.
“I want you to tell me some things that make you happy. Beautiful things and things you love. Maybe we can pick you a name from those.”
I don’t even need her to write them down, because there’s only one thing I feel that way about. “I love the sky,” I say, thinking about what Dean told me to remember forever.
“Sky,” she says, smiling. “I love that name. I think it’s perfect. Now lets think of one more name, because everyone needs two names. What else do you love?”
I close my eyes and try to think of something else, but I can’t. The sky is the only thing I love that’s beautiful and makes me happy when I think about it. I open my eyes back up and look at her. “What do you love, Karen?”
She smiles and puts her chin in her hand, resting her elbow on the table. “I love lots of things. I love pizza the most. Can we call you Sky Pizza?”
I giggle and shake my head. “That’s a silly name.”
“Okay, let me think,” she says. “What about teddy bears? Can we call you Teddy Bear Sky?”
I laugh and shake my head again.
She pulls her chin out of her hand and leans toward me. “Do you want to know what I really love?”
“Yeah,” I say.
“I love herbs. Herbs are healing plants and I love growing them to find ways to help people feel better. Someday I want to own my own herbal business. Maybe for good luck, we could pick out the name of an herb. There are hundreds of them and some of them are really pretty names.” She stands up and walks to the living room and grabs a book, then brings it back to the table. She opens it up and points to one of the pages. “What about thyme?” she says with a wink.
I laugh and shake my head.
“How about…calendula?”
I shake my head again. “I can’t even say that word.”
She crinkles up her nose. “Good point. I guess you need to be able to say your own name.” She looks down at the page again and reads a few more out loud, but I don’t like them. She turns the page one more time and says, “What about Linden? It’s more of a tree than an herb, but its leaves are shaped like a heart. Do you like hearts?”
I nod. “Linden,” I say. “I like that name.”