When I Found You by Catherine Ryan Hyde

into the boy’s eyes; he looked away from Nathan as if he could establish the matter of his disdain just that simply. His skin was ravaged by teenage acne. He had one large fraying hole in the knee of his dirty blue jeans.
    Nathan did not enjoy unannounced visits, nor did he initially connect with a memory of having seen these people before.
    “Nathan McCann?” the woman asked.
    “Yes.”
    “Nathan McCann, this is Nathan Bates. The boy you found in the woods.”
    A brief silence reigned.
    Nathan looked more closely at the boy, who continued to avoid Nathan’s eyes.
    Nathan felt a pang of disappointment. As though part of him had known this moment would arrive, or a moment something like it, yet that part of him had expected more. Some sense of already-established bond or instant kinship. But no such bond could be seen, not anywhere from his door stoop to the horizon. The boy was simply a stranger. A sullen, unresponsive and unkempt one, at that. And there was no purpose in Nathan’s denying it, even if it had been possible to do so.
    Ertha Bates continued. “I remember at the time you were keen to have this boy for your own. Very keen. As if you had always expected it would go just that way. And maybe even as though you assumed it would be a good thing, to have this young person in your life. You might have dodged a rude awakening on that score. Unless you’re really brave enough to be wanting a second chance.
    “So, tell me, Mr. McCann, do you still feel that same way now? Because I am at my wits’ end. I’ve had it, that’s all I can say. That’s all there is to it. I’ve had it. Each person has just a certain store of patience, and he has snapped mine in half. Just broken clean through it. And I will not live like this any more. This situation is completely outside my ability to cope. I raised five children on what I thought to be normal discipline, but if there’s something this boy responds to, I haven’t stumbled across it yet.
    “You still want this boy, Mr. McCann? You’d be doing me a great favor. And you’d be doing him a favor as well. I figure he’d be better off here than as a ward of the state, and that’s his next stop, believe me.
    “I was on my way to the police station right now to turn him over. Give up custody and let him be someone else’s problem for a change. And then partway through the drive I thought of you. And first I thought, well, if I’m going to give up custody I have to at least keep that promise I made to you fifteen years ago. To bring him around to meet you. And then a voice in my head said, ‘Ask him if he still feels that same way now.’ Even though I really couldn’t imagine why anyone would. How anyone could be that foolish. But the voice said to ask. So I’m asking. Because I’m sure he’d be better off here. That is, if you still feel that same way now.”
    “Yes,” Nathan said. “I still feel that same way now.”
    The boy’s eyes came up briefly when he said this, then flicked away again.
    “Good. I have his things out in the car.”
    “We’ll help you carry them in,” Nathan said. “Won’t we, Nathan?”
    Ertha Bates didn’t linger. She did not appear to wish to discuss the issue further. There were no longing looks of regret. There was no sentimental goodbye. If she felt she would miss the boy she had raised as her own for fifteen years, she betrayed none of it.
    As soon as they had unloaded the three suitcases and one laundry bag out on to the curb, she climbed back into her ancient brown sedan, accelerated with a faint screech of tires and drove away.
    •  •  •
     
    On the trips into the house with the boy’s belongings, Nathan felt a pang of regret that Flora had not lived to see the day.
    She’d teased him unmercifully for feeling it was meant to be.
    •  •  •
     
    “You can sleep in my wife’s old room,” he said to the boy. “What do you go by?”
    “What?”
    “What do they call you?”
    “Oh.