Orphanhood

Orphanhood is both a concrete loss and a persistent absence in the novel: Chris Davis loses his parents at sixteen, then searches for belonging in a city where he is lonely despite the kindness of his colleagues. His correspondence with Kayla Renae Morrison offers the possibility of family by choice. A parallel thread follows Little Jay, a boy living at The orphanage and repeatedly rejected, whose vulnerability exposes how difficult it can be to turn care into a secure sense of belonging.

Chris Davis’s Loss and Displacement

Chris Davis tells Kayla Renae Morrison that he grew up in St. Francisville and moved to New Orleans at sixteen, a few months after he and his parents were involved in a car wreck. His parents did not survive. The accident therefore marks both the end of his childhood home life and his relocation to a larger city, where he has to make a life without the family he had known.

His account does not present that new life as wholly unwelcoming. Chris says that his colleagues are kind and that he is making friends, yet the city remains easy to feel lonely in. The coexistence of kindness and isolation matters: friendly contacts have not replaced the family he lost. Even the pleasures he shares in his letter—hot chocolate, watching stars from his apartment terrace, and listening to true-crime podcasts—belong to the ordinary life he has built after bereavement, rather than erasing the absence at its center.

Correspondence and Chosen Family

When Jessica Cooper brings Kayla a letter, Kayla outwardly acts unconcerned, though she desperately hopes that this one will be different. For two weeks she has received hundreds of responses to her personal advertisement, but wealth has often attracted men she considers lazy. Against that background, Chris’s letter becomes significant not just as the beginning of a courtship but as an exchange in which loss and loneliness can be spoken about directly.

Chris’s first letter identifies the car wreck and the deaths of his parents as part of his history. Kayla’s reply meets that disclosure with her own: she also lost her parents in a car wreck at sixteen. She tells him that the accident left her with a back injury and a limp, and offers a description of her appearance while insisting that what matters is what is on the inside. Their shared bereavement gives the correspondence a point of recognition, although the letters do not make their lives identical. Kayla is also a mother, and Chris tells her that he has always wanted a daughter but never found the right person with whom to start a family.

Chris’s response to Kayla’s letter reveals how much the prospect of connection means to him. Tears come to his eyes; he thinks of meeting her as a blessing and, having been orphaned at sixteen, is glad to have found someone he can call his own. He presses the letter to his nose, where Kayla’s perfume still lingers, with the scent identified as roses. The gesture makes the letter a tangible token of intimacy: a written exchange offers the promise of belonging before the two have established a shared life in person.

That promise recurs when Kayla returns from a fundraiser and opens her email to find a new message with the subject line CALL ME YOURS. Her excitement at recognizing Chris shows that the correspondence has become an anticipated relationship, not a single consoling letter. For a man who describes himself as having no family to call his own, the repeated act of writing—and the answer it receives—makes chosen connection feel possible.

Family as a Point of Contrast

Chris’s loss becomes especially clear in a conversation with Adi. When Adi says that Chris has never had a family like hers, he answers that she still has a mother. The exchange briefly places their experiences side by side: Adi can speak from within a living family, while Chris’s parents died in the accident he has already described to Kayla. His reply does not deny Adi’s difficulties; it identifies the family bond she still possesses, a bond unavailable to him after sixteen.

The exchange also shows that Chris’s orphanhood is not merely introductory information. He returns to it when a conversation turns to family, and its meaning shifts with the person he is speaking to. With Kayla, the shared death of their parents supports recognition and the imagined possibility of building a family. With Adi, the same history makes the difference between her having a mother and his having lost both parents immediately visible.

Little Jay and Repeated Rejection

The novel offers a separate picture of childhood vulnerability through Little Jay, whom Jessica Cooper visits at The orphanage after receiving a call from Sister Gertrude, who is in charge there. Little Jay has secretly gotten into Jessica’s car, prompting her to remind him that he cannot leave the orphanage because the sisters will worry. He apologizes in a small voice. Jessica’s response is marked by guilt: each call asking her to come see him reopens her awareness of how much he has endured.

Little Jay’s imaginative life is part of what makes him distinctive. He invents stories and has many imaginary friends, but Jessica does not know how to bring him into her world without risking other people picking on him. She regards him as just as important as Jamie Cooper, yet admits that loving Jamie Cooper feels easier than loving a child she thinks of as broken by repeated rejection. Her affection is real, but affection alone has not shown her how to give him the love she believes he deserves. His circumstances therefore extend the novel’s attention from bereavement through death to the insecurity created by repeated abandonment, without establishing that his history is the same as Chris’s.

Narrative Significance

Chris’s orphanhood helps define what he seeks in romance: not simply attention, but the possibility of having someone he can call family. The novel gives that longing concrete form through letters, a remembered car wreck, and the small physical detail of rose perfume left on paper. Kayla’s corresponding loss allows them to recognize one another, while her daughter makes the family Chris hopes for something more specific than an abstract wish.

Little Jay’s thread complicates any easy equation between caring about someone and making that person feel secure. Jessica wants to protect him from ridicule and considers him part of her world, but she is unsure how to include him; his apology and her recurring guilt mark the distance between attachment and the capacity to show it. Together, the two strands distinguish bereavement from institutional vulnerability while returning to a common concern: family is felt not only through who remains, but through whether someone can be welcomed, recognized, and kept close.