I try to be quiet in case Holly already has the younger two asleep, but who am I kidding? I don’t do anything quietly.
I pause at Eli’s door and stick my head in. He’s got headphones on and the Switch console in his hands. He looks up when the door opens. I look pointedly at the stack of textbooks beside his bed.
“I’m done,” he mouths, then taps his fist to his chest like he’s making a promise. His attention is back on his game before the door even shuts.
I will come back and check on that homework later, just to be sure. When he first came to us three years ago, his definition of “done” differed greatly from mine, but we’re working on it.
Somehow, weirdly, miraculously, I have more patience with him and his slippery standards of success than Holly does.
That is something I never imagined. That I would be the patient one.
I knock on Rosa’s door and wait for her quiet “come in” before entering. She’s the one we never have to worry about when it comes to homework. She gets her shit done with a ferocity that impresses even me. So I’m not surprised when she’s still at her desk pecking away at her keyboard.
The smile she gives me is friendly, but not relaxed. I stay by the door, because she’s still not completely comfortable here and the therapist we’ve been working with says she needs to know we respect her space.
Maybe she’ll never be completely comfortable with me. I can live with that. I wasn’t completely comfortable with me for a long time.
I had no idea when Holly said just over three years ago there was a sibling pair she wanted to adopt, that Rosa—the girl I’d met in Holly’s class—was part of that sibling pair.
I hadn’t known there were specific kids she wanted. That she wanted to create a forever home for Rosa before the girl aged out of the system. I don’t know that it would have mattered. Because at that point, I was already all in with Holly.
She could have told me she wanted to adopt an interdimensional demon and I would have found a way to make it happen. As it turned out, the other couple the judge wanted to give Rosa and Eli to changed their minds. Rosa and Eli ended up with us after all. First at Holly’s house, while I went through the training and certification to become a foster parent.
Now, Rosa gestures to her laptop. “I’m just finishing up this paper for my poli-sci class.”
“Okay,” I say. It’s not that late and I trust her to go to bed at a reasonable time.
I nod and am about to leave when she says, “When I’m done, do you think . . .” She trails off when I look back at her, then after a minute she blurts, “Do you think you could look at my Calculus homework in the morning? I’m not sure I got it all.”
“Of course,” I say, suppressing a smile. Because, holy shit. This is the first time she’s asked me for anything.
She’s at the university now. She could live on campus, but she chose to continue living at the house. She says it’s because she wants to be there for Eli, but Holly has a different theory. She thinks Rosa was without a real home for so long she’s still a little afraid it will all disappear.
I know how she feels. Sometimes this new life of mine feels bigger than I deserve. Tenure. The McPherson Fellowship. My research team. Yeah, those are all things I wanted. But the other stuff? Holly? The kids? This life we’ve built? It’s all more than I could have ever imagined. Bigger than anything I had ever wanted or imagined for myself.
So, yeah, I can’t blame Rosa for wanting to stay at home a little longer.
When Rosa doesn’t say anything else, I shut the door and head to the next room, imagining the victory dance Holly will do when I tell her that Rosa asked me for help on her homework.
I don’t knock on the door to the twins’ room because I can hear Holly’s voice, so I know they’re still awake.
I open the door, slip inside and just stand there, looking at my wife.
She’s cross-legged on the floor between the two beds with an open book on her lap, but she’s not reading from it. Instead, she’s running her fingernails down Bella’s back, while Luna, who is lying next to Bella in the same bed, rocks a stuffed parrot in her arms.
The two girls are the glue that holds this crazy family together. They’re the reason this crazy family exists at all. Because they are the reason the other couple decided not to take Rosa and Eli.
The week Rosa and Eli were supposed to go to that other couple, their birth mom showed up at CPS pregnant with the twins. The mom, who had signed over parental rights to Eli and Rosa, was wise enough and loving enough to realize that she couldn’t do right by the twins either. That other family wanted two kids, not four. And weren’t ready for infants, let alone twins.
Now, Luna kicks her legs out—a sure sign she’s exhausted—but says, “Tell us again about the night we were born.”
Holly sighs. “It’s late, baby. You need your sleep.”
The room is dark and somehow the girls haven’t noticed me standing in the doorway yet.
“I wanna hear it, too, Momma,” Bella says. “Tell us the story about how Daddy was dying and you saved him.”
Holly chuckles. “Well, he wasn’t dying, but he was very, very lonely.”
