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At twenty-nine, Carter knew exactly how his life looked on paper.
Single.
No wife.
No sprawling house with extra bedrooms already waiting.
No large investment account or family fortune that could make five children seem like an easy addition to his life.
What he had instead was a nearly empty savings account, five newly purchased car seats, a workshop he had hurriedly converted into sleeping space, and a decision that almost everyone around him seemed to think was impossible.
A few feet away, five young siblings sat pressed together on a hard wooden bench outside a family courtroom.
The oldest was barely six years old.
The youngest had recently turned one.
Under the fluorescent lights, the children clung to sleeves, fingers, and each other with the instinctive determination of kids who had already learned that adults could change their entire world with a few words and a signature.
Within the hour, they could be sent to four different foster homes in separate towns.
The official language made the plan sound orderly.
Separate placement.
To Carter, there was nothing orderly about it.
He kept looking at the oldest boy, who had positioned himself beside the smaller children as if his body alone could keep the group together.
Every few seconds, the boy checked on the baby.
Then he looked toward the courtroom doors.
Then back at his brothers and sisters.
Carter understood that kind of watching.
Three weeks earlier, he had known nothing about these children.
Then he saw an emergency placement notice.
There was a photograph attached to it, and one detail stopped him cold: the oldest boy had one arm wrapped tightly around the smallest child.
Carter stared at that picture longer than he meant to.
He told himself to close it.
He couldn’t.
He called social services.
The response was immediate and practical.
“Mr. Carter, you’re a single man,” the worker told him. “Taking in five children under seven isn’t realistic.”
Carter understood why she said it.
Five children meant five sets of clothes, five routines, meals, appointments, school needs, illnesses, arguments, fears, and nights when somebody would wake up crying.
The concern wasn’t cruel.
It was obvious.
But the alternative was already being arranged.
