Meredith Combs, the social worker responsible for selecting the stream of adoptive families that gave me back, wanted to talk to me about blame.

Excerpted from The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh. Copyright © 2011 by Vanessa Diffenbaugh. Excerpted by permission of Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher