"We have to," she said. "Give him a family, I mean. If this is the only family he ever gets, then at least he had us. At least he had that, before he goes back to ... we can't stop what he's going back to. We can just try to fix it and give him what we can, while he's here, right?"

She didn't look up from the floor.

"I thought Payido was someone else, at first," she admitted. "Blonde hair calling me Mommy. I keep waiting for her to show up. She's ... not going to."