Page 109 of Praising Haru

“I love you too.”

Mum stares at us for a few seconds, her expression slowly softening. “You do, don’t you? Love each other, I mean.”

“It should be obvious if you’ve got the eyes and ears of a hawk,” Dad teases.

Mum sighs. “It is obvious. I’m sorry, Haru. I haven’t been fair to you. Can we start again?”

I breathe a sigh of relief.

Haru smiles. “Of course.”

“Tell me about yourself and your family. I want to know everything about the young man who’s claimed my son’s heart,” Mum says.

The rest of the meal is a lot more relaxed. Afterwards, Haru and I help wash up, and then Mum insists on pulling out old photo albums to embarrass me.

Haru pauses on my baby pictures. “You were an adorable baby.”

I snort. “Aren’t all babies adorable?”

“I guess so.”

I squeeze his knee. “You okay, babe?”

He replies with a brilliant smile. “Yes. I don’t have any pictures of me being this tiny. I was under a year old when my parents adopted me.”

“I’m not sure how old I was.” I didn’t think to ask because after I got over the initial shock of finding out I was adopted, I channelled all my energy into worrying about Dad and supporting Mum.

“Two weeks old.” Mum’s voice wobbles as she points to a photo of a tiny me. “We took that the day we brought you home. The adoption wasn’t formalised that day. There was a period of fostering you first, but as far as we’re concerned, the day we brought you home is when you became ours.”

A lump forms in my throat. Although her words aren’t as poetic as Haru’s mum’s, the sentiment is the same.

Mum reaches for my hand and squeezes it. “We love you, Kyle.”

“I know, Mum.” I hug her and then go and hug Dad.

He pats my back.

“Have you forgiven us?” Mum asks once I’m sitting beside Haru again.

“For what?”

“Not telling you about the adoption.”

“Uh, would you like me to give you a moment?” Haru asks.

“No. It’s fine.” I turn my attention to my parents. “Haru knows everything. He was the person who listened when I first found out I was adopted.”

Mum frowns. “I thought you said you met in Blayd’s a few weeks ago.”

“We did. In person. We’d been talking online for a while before that. The day you told me, well, I had a lot of feelings about it and needed to get them out, so I joined a forum for people who have been adopted. I ranted, and Haru responded. We’ve been talking ever since.”

Mum twists her hands together.

I put my hand over hers. “It was a shock finding out you weren’t my birth parents, but youaremy parents. The only ones I’ve ever known. The ones who have been there for every first, every smile, every tear, every achievement, and every failure. I don’t understand why you didn’t tell me earlier, but what’s done is done. We can’t change the past.”

“We didn’t tell you because it didn’t matter to us. You were our son, end of story,” Dad says.

“We didn’t know what good telling you would do,” Mum says. “But we never meant for you to find out that way. If we’d known—” She shakes her head and looks at Haru. “When did your parents tell you?”