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And so it was.
In part.
Millie - 10 years
“Mills!” Silvano’s voice called from the living room, making me shoot the older two kids a conspiratory wince that had them both giggling. The oldest, a boy. One who looked like the spitting image of his father, save for my smattering of freckles. Dark hair, deep blue eyes. The next, a daughter, was my little mini me. But she had her father’s penchant for keeping things clean. The kid organized her stuffed animals. And ‘deep cleaned’ her dollhouse.
“Guess Daddy found them,” I said, lifting our baby out of the crib. The jury was still out on who he was going to look more like. He was still stubbornly refusing to grow any hair, and his eyes were a deep color that could be called blue. Or gray. Time would tell.
All four of us made our way out of the nursery, ready to confront Silvano’s confusion and likely a small bit of frustration.
I never got sick of our condo.
It had taken me almost a year to find the right one. I found that everything that went up for sale in Manhattan had a modern, sterile-feeling look to it. And there was no way I wanted to leave Silvano’s lovely, homey apartment for an un-homey condo.
But this one had lots of exposed brickwork, warm wood floors, a central kitchen, and a sunken living room. And more than enough bedrooms for our ever-growing family.
The kids flew at their father as we got to the bottom landing, not having seen him in almost forty-eight hours, thanks to a job that had required more work than he’d been anticipating, since he’d told me he wouldn’t be longer than a day.
I would have worried if this were still the early days of our relationship. But I’d been through this several times now. And I also had contact to the entire family if I needed to contact someone who would know if Silvano was alright.
Once the kids were done greeting him, I moved in, leaning into his familiar spicy scent, his strong chest, his loving embrace.
“Mills, we just got four of them out of the apartment,” Silvano said as he reached out to rub our son’s bald head.
“I know,” I said, looking over toward where the litter of puppies were situated in a giant folding pool in the living room to contain their mess. The pool was wrapped with fencing to keep them from escaping when we didn’t want them too. “But they were on a kill list,” I told him.
A kill list.
Nine innocent puppies.
Their only crime was being born.
I wouldn’t have been able to sleep at night knowing that their lives could have been saved if only they’d found a foster.
So I stepped up.
As a whole, I’d stepped away from working at the shelter once we started our family. But I still fostered as often as I could, knowing that having available fosters was literally the difference between life and death for some dogs.
Storm was getting to be an old man now, but he was still great with the revolving door of new friends that came through the apartment during his life.
He was, after all, the whole reason for this mission of mine.
Silvano exhaled hard at the information. “They look like a large breed mix,” he said, walking over to them and giving them the pets they anxiously fell all over one another for.
“Yeah. Definitely some kind of shepherd in there,” I said, looking at their sweet faces. “They shouldn’t be here longer than a week or two,” I said, knowing he was thinking of them outgrowing the pool.
“Not when they are this cute,” he agreed as Storm finally finished his stretch, and came over for some love. “The kids love them already?” he asked.
I shot him a guilty look.
“They’ve been working on you, huh?” he asked, knowing the kids wanted a puppy of their own after loving on and losing so many to their forever homes. They adored Storm, of course. But they wanted someone that could keep up with their energy level.
“We did promise them,” I reminded him.
“Yeah,” he agreed as I followed him in the kitchen to wash his hands, then take the squirming baby from me, settling him up on his shoulder, then hooking an arm around me, pulling me into his other side. “Just one, though,” he said. “We’ve got our hands full already with Little Man,” he said as the baby let out a string of babble. “How’d you hold up?” he asked. “Didn’t want to leave you that long with the kids.”
“We were fine. Your mom was over all day today. I didn’t even get to hold him,” I said, rubbing the baby’s back. “Then Miko dropped over to scoop the bigger two up to go to the park with him and his littles.”
