(Rebecca's POV)
I sit on the porch steps.
Eric sits beside me. His arm goes around my shoulders. The weight of it settles against the back of my neck, warm and steady, and I lean into it because I have learned, in the past three weeks, that leaning is not the same as falling. Leaning is a choice. Falling is what happens when you run out of them.
I watch my son.
He is asleep in the middle of a family that took him on sight. A man he met four hours ago is holding still so he can rest. A woman who fed him pie has memorized his favorite color. A dog chose him at noon and hasn't left his side.
And I understand — finally, completely, in a place below my thinking — the difference between being tolerated in a house and being fully accepted by one.
The Clark house tolerated Jack. The Clark ho
