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“He told me the pizza was on the house. And then, instead of calling me an Uber, he offered to drive me home. Normally I would never accept a ride from a stranger I had just met, but Tony seemed different, you know? Really genuine. He drove me back to Fresno, which was over an hour in traffic, but he didn’t complain. He listened to more of my story and told me everything was going to be okay. That’s kind of why I came back here to Riverville to surrender the baby. I figured if this little town was full of people like him, then it would be a good place for my baby.”
She chuckled and looked over her shoulder toward the counter. “That’s why I insisted on meeting here today. Because this place feelssafeto me, you know? I was hoping to see Tony today, but I don’t think he’s working. I kind of have to tell him…” She trailed off.
“What?” Clara asked, voice barely above a whisper. “What did you want to tell him?”
Melanie shrugged her shoulders. “Throughout my pregnancy, he was the kindest person I met. The one person who made me feel like everything was going to be okay, and he wasn’t justsayingthat. I kind of named my baby after him. I know that sounds silly, to name a baby after a guy who gave me free pizza and a ride home, but…”
Tears were streaming down Clara’s face by this point. Finally Melanie realized something was wrong. She looked at me in confusion, like she had accidentally kicked a puppy.
I can’t imagine what Clara must be feeling right now,I thought.To learn about this a year after her father died…
“This place,” I said, gesturing. “It’s Clara’s family restaurant. The man you met was her father.”
“He was sick,” Clara choked out between the tears. “You must have seen him right before he went on hospice care. He wanted to keep working right until the end, so he was frail in his final days…”
“Oh no!” Melanie said. “I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to mention—”
“No! Don’t apologize!” Clara said with a happy laugh. It was a strange sound at odds with the tears still streaming down her face. “When I started helping them take care of the baby, I thought it was a sign that he had the same name as my father. It turns out it reallywasa sign. You have no idea how good it feels to hear your story about my father. If he were here right now he would be so happy…”
I pulled Clara from the other side of the booth into my side, and held her as she wept.
37
Clara
I was right. The babywasa sign. Just not in the way I expected.
For the past year, I had struggled to accept my father’s death. Sure, I logically knew he was gone. I had been to the funeral, and had been helping my mom handle all of the details that cameafter. But I hadn’t accepted it in my heart. Emotionally, it kind of felt like knowing I had failed an exam but was too afraid to look at the actual score.
His death, and his absence from my life, stayed in the back of my head. A pulsing pain that could be dealt with later.
Hearing Melanie’s story brought that pain straight to the forefront of my mind. My father was gone. Forever. But he had left a legacy behind without knowing it. A funny twist of fate that had changed the course of my own life.
As I cried in Derek’s arms, a calm realization came over me. My father was gone, sure, but hehadleft a sign for me. A sign in the form of a baby who was named after him, because he had been kind enough to help a stranger in need.
I was meant to take care of him,I thought as the tears began to subside.Baby Anthony really was the sign I thought he was.
I still didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. Long-term, at least. But for now, I had a clear path forward. Especially if Derek was going to be adopting the little guy.
The other guys were sick of waiting in the fire engine, so we told them they could come in. I was afraid that Melanie might change her mind about the adoption once she saw her baby again, but she was loving and friendly and couldn’t stop talking about how happy she was that a fireman was adopting him.
We ordered three pizzas and spent the next hour discussing how to proceed.
We had a few days until second-shift began. Normally, that wouldn’t be enough time to complete all of the paperwork, but Derek called in all the favors he had. His lawyer friend—the one who had recommended keeping the baby at the station as much as possible—drew up the private adoption papers. The first was a consent form to transfer permanent legal custody to Derek. Melanie signed it immediately, but we still had to get the biological father to sign. Derek was worried that might be a problem.
It turned out to be a non-issue. Melanie’s ex signed the document the next day. Melanie told us he practically fell all over himself trying to sign it, because he was afraid of being on the hook for child support.
Derek’s sister then expedited the paperwork through the Social Services department. “Don’t you need the birth certificate for that?” I asked as he folded the documents into an envelope to give to her.
Derek smiled. “I already got it back and made a photocopy for processing.”
“How’d you manage that?” Jordan asked.
Derek leaned against the wall and crossed his arms. “I made a call to Billy’s wife. I suspected they don’t have the best marriage, and sure enough, I was right. She said she would do anything to get back at that cheating, lying asshole. Her words, not mine. So she rummaged through his office, found the birth certificate, and gave it back to me.Andthe letter Melanie left when she surrendered the baby.”
Logistically, we pretended like the baby had never been surrendered at all. This saved the three firemen from legal trouble for not turning the baby over to Social Services immediately, and it protected Melanie from prosecution for child abandonment. If anyone asked why the firemen had been taking care of a baby for the last couple of weeks, we would tell them that we were in talks to adopt the baby and were doing a trial run of taking care of him.
By Friday morning, everything was done. Well,almosteverything. California had a thirty-day period of revocation. That was the period where the birth mother—or father—could change their mind about the adoption and veto the entire thing. But we knew the father wouldn’t do anything, and Melanie insisted she wouldn’t change her mind.
