He popped a noise from a bottle, filled flutes when Alexandra came home. She was very serious, he was.
“Open it,” she said. “He’s coming home.”
A new law of the universe: look at a photo, and the information is son. Strange that that is what it meant. Jeremy followed the patterns of light. What can be known? You must know the measurements of at least one object to attempt to scale the rest. Something behind Jeremy’s eyes quivered.
And there he was, this little guy, with black hair and dimples, standing in pajamas dwarfed by a white teddy bear the size of a large toddler. In the background, another little boy flopped on a mat. Han looked into the camera, confused. His gait appeared uncertain, or perhaps it was the gravity of his world that was shifting before the lens. Han’s hand was extended, reaching, maybe, or else thrown out as a counterbalance. Jeremy couldn’t contain himself; he emailed the photo to Robert and Cassandra.
This is him—this is our boy.
Alexandra was sponging mascara from her eyes.
“Who is he?” Jeremy said. Then, “We are going to raise someone who has emotions we can’t see.”
“Why wouldn’t we see them?”
She held the device with the picture, the one from which he called her, the one that connected him to the world. He stood behind her, and they looked at their son, a stranger in a picture taken many miles away.
“He will never have seen a white man probably,” he said. Jeremy rested a hand on her shoulder, a cheek on her back. “He will think I’m a monster.”
“What are you afraid of?” she said.
“It’s exactly what I want.”
And he couldn’t explain that for so many years his one belief was that a home could not hold. He had believed in having a tighter life so less would be undone.