“This is one of the better reasons I’ve heard for filing this kind of paperwork,” she’d told me. “Most people come in here for inheritance reasons. You came in here for a reason that actually matters.”
She’d walked me through the whole process that afternoon, the waiting period, the paperwork, the eventual court date, explaining each step twice to make sure I actually understood it and wasn’t just nodding politely.
“You’ll need his signature eventually,” she’d said. “Not today. Whenever feels right. Some people wait years for the right moment. Something tells me you already have one in mind.”
I hadn’t told her about the birthday yet, not specifically, but she wasn’t wrong.
Marcus pulled me into a hug right there in the driveway, the kind that lasted longer than either of us probably meant it to.
“I need to think about the signature part,” he said, pulling back. “Not because I don’t want to. Because I want to make sure I do it right, when the time actually comes.”
“Take all the time you need,” I said. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Mom finally came down off the porch then too, hugging us both at once, a slightly awkward three-way embrace that none of us seemed to mind in the slightest.
“I’ve been trying to figure out what to say for the last five minutes,” she admitted, wiping at her eyes with the back of her hand. “I still haven’t landed on anything better than thank you.”
“Thank you for what?” I asked.
“For seeing him,” she said. “The way I always saw him. It’s a rare thing, a kid noticing what a grown man quietly gives up for him.”
Jonah and Lily came running off the porch then, Lily asking loudly what a petition was, Jonah just grinning like he already understood more than his nine-year-old sister did.
“It means Eli wants Dad to actually be his dad,” Jonah said. “Like, officially.”
“He already is,” Lily said, matter-of-fact the way only a nine-year-old can manage. “This is just paperwork.”
Out of the mouths of children, apparently.
The rest of the party happened almost normally after that, cake and off-key singing and Mom crying twice more before the night was over, though the second time was clearly happy crying.
Lily insisted on sitting next to me the whole time, sliding her chair closer until our shoulders touched, not saying much, just occasionally patting my arm like she was checking I was still real.
