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"No."
"What do you mean, no? Your father is matchmaking so hard because he wants more grandchildren."
"And if you and I want children, we will give him some."
"I just told you—"
"That you won't be carrying those children, but that doesn't mean we can't be parents," he pointed out in the gentlest voice she'd ever heard him use. "If we both want it."
"You mean surrogate?" she asked.
He shrugged. "That's one option, but not the one I like most."
"What do you mean?"
"There are so many children who have been orphaned by war, so many children abandoned by their parents, we could give some of them a home."
His words were so shocking to her, Blythe had to take a moment to really let their meaning sink in. He wanted to adopt? Since when? But like he'd said, they'd never talked about children or what the ideal family would like to either of them.
Because she never allowed them to delve into discussions of the future.
"Some?" she asked faintly. "How many is some."
"Well, no more than four probably, maybe five. Not a baseball team anyway." He said it like wanting to adopt any number less than fielding a baseball team of nine was no big deal.
"You and I both work." Four, maybe five children?
"And we have the means to hire help, but surely we can both cut hours if necessary to give the love and attention our children will need."
"You make it sound so easy."
"Because it can be."
"Adoption?" she asked, still reeling from the knowledge he didn't just see it as a solution to her infertility but as a desired component to building a family.
"It was always part of my plan for the future."
"Always?"
"Since seeing the ravages of war."
She believed it. Blythe, more than anyone else, knew the horrors he'd seen, and understood how those deprivations he'd witnessed had made him want to do something to continue to help the helpless.
Children left without parents, for whatever reason.
"You never said."
"You changed the topic every time the future or children or parenthood came up."
She had. She knew she had. "You know why now."
"Yes, but now you know that your infertility is not a barrier between us. It only makes you more perfect for me."
"How can you say that?" she asked in shock.
"Because I would rather adopt than have biological children. Another woman might see that as a detriment."
"I wouldn't have, even if I could have children," she assured him.
