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But he did.
He loved me.
And, what’s more, he loved them too.
“Yes,” I said, immediately reaching for my phone.
Only to have Hazel hang up on us because “there’s a bouncy house.”
“I feel like I should be offended that we take second fiddle to a bounce house,” I said, leaning into Seth. “What are you doing?” I asked as he reached for his phone.
“Ordering a trampoline,” he said. “I think Sully is going to like it as much as the kids do.”
Their Uncle Sully had become a big part of their lives. The man who was sometimes half-child himself.
They adored him.
I adored him.
And all their other aunts and uncles, this big, sprawling, amazing support system I’d always wanted for them. That Seth had given to them and me.
I was the luckiest woman in the world.
Seth - 5 years
“I know that look,” I said as I brought Lana a cup of coffee as she watched our son, little toddling Liam, try to engage his big brother, then sisters, but to no avail.
They were thirteen and nine, and six now, not really interested in baby toys. Sure, they had their moments when they would play with their little brother, would get him laughing and smiling. But it wasn’t very often. They were busy with their big kid interests.
Isaac, baseball and cars—becoming an almost ever-present fixture at my dad’s repair shop when he wasn’t busy with school. Hazel—ballet and mixed martial arts, because she was full of surprises like that.
Clara, at about five, distractedly passed Liam one of his toys, bopping it across the table to entertain him for a moment, but was wrapped up in the book she was reading. She’d been a bit of a baby savant with books, falling into them early, and learning to read well before her first day of kindergarten. Much, we believed, to her Aunt Luna’s and Uncle Amos’s encouragement.
They all grew to look more like their mother every day, their hair darkening over the years like Lana said hers had as she grew up.
When we looked at them, we saw no traces of that piece of shit who’d contributed to some of their DNA.
Clara knew nothing about her biological father. Hazel no longer remembered him, either. Isaac was the only one with memories, but a lot of that anxiety and overprotectiveness of his mom went away when Simon died, and he knew I was in Lana’s life as her protector.
He was nothing but a memory now. And each day that passed, that shadow became more distant.
All he meant to the kids was three separate trust funds Lana had set up for him. She’d never touched the money his death had left her and them. She wanted it to fund their college, then businesses or their first houses. Making their life easier, something that he owed them, after the hell he’d put them all through.
“I know,” Lana said, shaking her head. “I just look at him and see how close Isaac and Hazel were because they were closer in age.”
They had been, too. Even when they fought, they got over it quickly, always ready to mend fences so they could play tag or jump on the trampoline, or play a board game.
They’d drifted a little bit over time. Which was normal. Kit and I hadn’t spent much time together when we were in our tweens and teens, either.
Rationally, I knew that the gap between Clara and Liam would lessen once he was out of the baby stage, and was able to play the way that Clara wanted to.
But, well, some part of me was somehow missing that newborn stage too. The bone-deep exhaustion coupled with getting to watch the wonder the baby felt as he started to discover the world.
I’d gotten some of that with Clara.
And all of it with Liam.
But I wouldn’t mind doing it just one more time.
“I’m game if you are,” I said, watching as Lana turned a surprised look at me.
We’d never really discussed beyond Liam.
We knew when the time had been right for Liam. As the older kids started to become more independent, were fully secure in the family we had built.
We’d even sat them down and asked them what they thought about another baby.
Isaac and Hazel had really seemed to give it thought, then each told us that they thought it would be nice. Clara had been a little too young to give us an opinion, but she’d been the first to try to hug and kiss her little brother, to be the one in his room in the mornings, ready to see him when he woke up.
I think we’d been so wrapped up in the baby and the other three that we just hadn’t considered wanting to try again.
But we were getting older.
It was now or never.
And I always knew that being a dad was what I wanted more than anything else.
