"You know," Tessa says to him one night, "We could always adopt."
Once, when he was very small, Duncan's mother took him out to the cemetery to meet his siblings.
She brought him to their tiny grave markers and introduced them one by one, oldest to youngest, if they had lived. Duncan doesn't remember their names, and he has no idea how he could ever learn them now, though at the time he had listened so very solemnly, and sworn to himself that he would never forget.
His mother had looked so very sad that day, the sunlight bright above them, and the breeze soft and cool. His mother had looked so very sad, and so deeply, brokenly longing. He didn't understand then, but he thinks he does now, a little.
He didn't understand, but he did not like to see his mother unhappy, so he broke the silence.
"And then you had me," he said, reaching out and taking her hand in a childish gesture of comfort.
She turned and smiled at him, in a strangely determined sort of way, and put her arm around him so tightly it almost hurt.
"Yes," she said very firmly, "Then I had you." As though by saying it, she could make it true.
"No," Duncan says shaking his head, even though he wants it, wants it more, perhaps, than anything in the world, "No," he says, "My life is too dangerous. I couldn't bring a child into it."