“Hey buddy!” Shane said as she opened her arms to him.

“Hi, Shane!” He replied as he ran into her arms. “It’s your turn now. Hurry up so we can go to the skate park later. Carmen did you bring my backpack? I want to work on my spelling words so we can get done faster.”

“Yeah it’s right here. Ok you’ll be fine on your own for a minute?”

Shay rolled his eyes and Shane cleared her throat and looked at him with a serious face. Shay sighed and said, “Yeah, Carmen I’ll be fine. I know where you are if I need you.”

*******************

The talk with Dr. Soden went fine. He mentioned that Shay had a desire to have a real family. They discussed it for a bit and then the therapist asked Shane what she had done about seeking permanency for her brother. She didn’t know what to say. It wasn’t that she didn’t want Shay to live with her forever—she did. She just knew how hard it was to get that to actually happen. She had been in foster care for so long and even though no one had ever thought she was good enough to try to adopt her, she knew a lot of kids who had wanted that—it almost never worked out unless the parents were dead or serving a life sentence.

Shane suddenly realized that Carmen and Dr. Soden were staring at her. “Uh, I mean isn’t that really hard? I mean, just from experience it seems so.”

“I think you should look into it, does either parent have visitation rights?”

“No.” Shane said firmly. “No, our dad isn’t allowed, uh actually the DCF got a restraining order against him for Shay, and his mom—god knows where she is.”

“Well that gives you some more credibility then—I’m serious. You may have more of a chance than you thought. So, how are things between you two?”

Shane and Carmen both gave each other confused looks.

He smiled. “I’m asking for the sake of Shay. Kids do a lot better when the people raising them have a stable relationship and I know that suddenly bringing a kid in can put some strain on it. So, everything going ok?”