Foster

by Claire Keegan

soon as she says this, I realise she is just like everyone else, and wish I was back at home so that all the things I do not understand could be the same as they always are.

Neither one of us talks, the way people sometimes don’t when they are happy – but as soon as I have this thought, I realise its opposite is also true.

Everything changes into something else, turns into some version of what it was before.

‘God help you, child,’ she whispers. ‘If you were mine, I’d never leave you in a house with strangers.’

‘You don’t ever have to say anything,’ he says. ‘Always remember that as a thing you need never do. Many’s the man lost much just because he missed a perfect opportunity to say nothing.’