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The first meeting was in a sterile visitation room. The children sat on a couch, a wall of suspicion and fear. Ruby hid her face; Cole stared at my shoes; Tessa looked at me with pure defiance. Owen, however, watched me with the eyes of someone much older than nine. He asked the only question that mattered: “Are you the man who’s taking us?”
“If you want me to be,” I replied.
“All of you,” I said firmly. “I’m not interested in just one.”
When they finally moved in, the silence I had lived in for two years was shattered. My house became a chaotic symphony of slamming doors, spilled juice, and the thunder of footsteps. It wasn’t easy. Ruby cried for her mother in the middle of the night, and I would sit on the floor by her bed until dawn. Cole threw tantrums, shouting that I wasn’t his real dad. Tessa hovered like a sentry, guarding her siblings, waiting for me to fail or give up. Owen tried to carry the weight of the world on his small shoulders until he eventually collapsed into tears, finally allowing himself to be a child.
Slowly, the friction began to smooth into a rhythm. We burned pancakes together. I learned how to braid hair and step over Legos without swearing. The backpacks by the door and the muddy sneakers in the hallway became the new landmarks of my life. I wasn’t replacing Lauren and Caleb, but I was honoring them by giving these children the family they were about to lose.
A year after the adoption was finalized, a woman named Susan arrived at my door. She was an attorney representing the children’s biological parents. She sat at my kitchen table, pushing aside a stray crayon to lay out a folder of documents. She explained that before their deaths, the parents had prepared a will. They weren’t wealthy, but they were diligent. They had placed their small home and a modest savings account into a trust for the children.
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