Chapter 2 - What I Told AndreaWeeks later, I sat across from Simone, both hands locked tight together beneath her desk. I didn't actually need any real comfort from her. I needed her to tell me plainly exactly what to do next.
"Elliot," she said, tapping the open file in front of her, "finding those particular babies doesn't actually grant you some kind of shortcut through this process."
"I know that already."
"This whole process will run genuinely long. Background checks. Home visits. Character references. Questions you honestly won't enjoy answering."
"I'll answer every single one of them."
"You just buried your own fiancée and your own baby, Elliot."
My jaw tightened hard at that. Simone noticed the reaction, but she didn't soften her tone at all. "That still genuinely hurts, hearing it said out loud."
"Yes, it does."
"Then I need to know something important from you. Are you actually trying to adopt these two girls because they genuinely need a father? Or because you personally need some kind of reason to get out of bed each morning?"
That particular question hit me hard. I looked down at my own cracked knuckles. "Both things can genuinely be true at once," I said slowly. "But only one of them can actually be allowed to lead."
"Which one, then?"
"They need genuine safety," I said. "So I'll be exactly that for them."
Simone watched me carefully for a long moment. "What does that actually mean, in practice?"
"It means I'll show up for every visit, every background check, every required class. I'll fix whatever genuinely needs fixing in my own life. But I won't ever ask two tiny babies to heal me instead."
Her pen finally stopped moving across the page. "I genuinely don't want them saving me, Andrea — Simone," I corrected myself. "I want to actually become a proper home for them instead."
Simone finally wrote something down on her notepad. "Then prove it to me."
So I did exactly that.
I cleaned the entire house top to bottom. I stocked diapers by the case. I asked Dean to check carefully for anything I might have genuinely missed. I repainted the nursery once more, keeping it the same pale yellow, because I genuinely couldn't erase Isabelle from that room entirely. I could only make real room inside it, for someone new.
Months later, once no biological relatives had actually been located anywhere, Hazel and Ruby finally came home as my official foster daughters. The formal adoption followed later, once the court cleared everything properly.
I became Dad, one small mistake at a time. I mixed up bottles constantly. I wasted entire packs of clean diapers. I slowly learned how to actually shop properly for little girls.
Years passed steadily that way. Colds. School plays. Parent-teacher meetings. Two separate birthday cakes every single year, because Ruby always wanted chocolate while Hazel always insisted on vanilla.
After the official case finally closed, Simone returned those two beach towels to me. I kept them carefully stored inside a cedar box. I kept Isabelle's photograph tucked in my own wallet. I kept Clara's name genuinely quiet, because I honestly believed silence somehow protected my daughters from unnecessary pain.
Then they turned fifteen, and the small secrets slowly began. We're studying together after school. We signed up for some weekend thing.
One particular Saturday, they came home tired, smiling considerably too brightly for the occasion. I stood waiting in the kitchen. "You two have been gone an awful lot lately."
Hazel opened the fridge casually. "We're teenagers, Dad."
Ruby grabbed a glass from the cabinet. "You raised us to be genuinely responsible."
"I also raised the two of you to be absolutely terrible liars."
They froze in place at that. For one brief moment, I genuinely thought they might actually tell me everything right then. Instead Hazel simply kissed my cheek. "We're okay, Dad."
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I wanted badly to demand the actual truth from them. But fear kept my own mouth firmly shut instead. Deep down, honestly, I thought I already knew what was going on. Their adoption had never once been a secret between us. Maybe they were quietly searching for their own biological family somewhere.
I'd promised myself, long ago, that I would never once force them to choose between us. So I swallowed that particular question down for three straight years.
