Page 77 of Where You Are

Just as his car goes over the ‘cliff’, aka rolls down the other side of my belly and into the abyss that is the between the couch cushions ravine, Travis walks in with his school folder and heads over to tuck it into his backpack that sits by the door. Matt walks in just after him and squishes in on my other side on the couch as Dylan looks for his next car victim that will roll down the hill and disappear.

“That was fast,” I address Travis, in reference to his homework. Dylan’s older brother gives me a small smile as he zips up his pack.

“Matt said that as soon as I finished you had a surprise for us.” He says it calmly as he makes his way over to the rest of us, moving a few of his little brother’s cars out of the way to have a seat on the coffee table.

“Is that so?” I ask, tilting my head and quirking an eyebrow at my husband, acting like I had no idea. He just smiles knowingly in response as he stretches an arm behind me and caresses his other hand over my belly.

We would’ve welcomed any kids that the system sent us with open hearts, but I have to say, we got lucky with these little guys. At age seven, Travis is one of those calm, reasonable kids who acts almost too grown up for his age. He was so helpful with Dylan when they came to us a year ago, giving us tips on how to get him to open up so we could see the loving little boy he really is, and stayed by his side until we had gained his trust. With their dark skin and black hair, they couldn’t look less like Matt and me, but they couldn’t feel any more like our own children. We loved them almost immediately, and gradually, we feel they’ve come to love us too, which is why we want to ask them something.

“Well, yeah,” I confirm, turning my attention back to Travis in front of me while I reach a hand next to me to tousle his brother’s hair. “We do have a surprise for you. Actually, we want to ask you something,” I inform them, taking a big breath and letting it out, both to psyche myself up and because of the pressure the baby girl inside of me is putting on my diaphragm.

“Are we in trouble?” asks Dylan, looking up from doomed car number twenty-one.

“Noooo,” I say with a reassuring smile as I pull him close. “Why would that be the surprise, silly?”

“I don’t know,” he gives an adorable shrug paired with a goofy grin.

“Guys, you’ve brought so much to our lives just by living here and accepting the love and care we have to give,” Matt chimes in on a more serious note. “And we love you.”

Instead of getting excited, Travis starts to look worried. It’s like both kids have forgotten that surprises are good. Sheesh.

“But?” he asks, his expression nervous.

“No buts, buddy,” I assure him warmly. “We want you to stay, permanently.”

Travis’s mouth parts as he looks between Matt and me.

“What’s perma-menty mean?” asks Dylan, taking his focus off his car and looking up at me.

“It means we want you to stay here forever,” Matt explains, looking over at him with his hand still resting on my belly. “We want to be your parents.”

Travis pulls in a sharp breath as a look of shock comes over his face, while Dylan looks up at me in wonder. Neither says a word, their little minds seeming to be taking this prospect in.

“What do you think, boys?” I ask cautiously, starting to feel a little nervous. They’ve been through so much, having lived with two other families before us. We don’t know what was promised to them in those situations, or never even presented for that matter. They would have every right to put their walls back up out of fear of this being too good to be true. “Would you like to keep living with us for good?”

I swallow hard while Travis takes another deep breath, and seems to find his voice.

“We can stay here and never live with anyone else? You’d be our parents?”

“Yes,” Matt answers adamantly. “We’ve been talking and we’ve felt this way for a long time. We think of you as ours. Our kids, and we’d like to make it official, as in give you our last names. We want to officially adopt you.”

I nod, feeling my eyes start to get misty. I’ve been slightly hormonal, and at times even irrational, like now when a tiny shred of doubt creeps into my pregnancy brain, making me think there’s a wrinkle of a chance they might not want this, or might not feel ready.

“What’s it mean?” Dylan asks, getting up on his knees to be more level with me and putting his little hand on my cheek to turn my face towards his. The action is so sweet and adorable it makes my heart burst.

“It means we want to be your Mom and Dad, Sweetie.” The wide-eyed look of wonder returns, and I add, “And we want the little girl in here to be your baby sister,” pointing to my belly.

“Can we… call you that?” Travis asks, fidgeting in his seat on the coffee table, looking between us again. He looks like he can hardly stay still. “Can we call you Mom and Dad?”

“Of course, you can,” I breathe out on a relieved sigh.

Before I can blink, Travis is on his feet and throwing himself at us, wrapping an arm around each of our necks and my heart swells and starts to glow, pounding out a beautiful tempo. Matt releases my belly to wrap his arms around Travis and I struggle to get one arm around each of my boys.

We sit for a few minutes, a joyous pile of family. Four, soon to be five of us, in our beautiful home on the lake that we had no idea could hold so much love. When we finally release each other, Matt thankfully takes that as a cue to lighten the moment before I turn into a sob sack.

“Well, it’s a good thing you guys are happy with this,” he baits, getting both sets of eyebrows to go up, “because now we can dive into that celebration cake that’s waiting for us out on the deck!”

Both boys gasp with excited smiles on their faces and make a beeline for the slider door that opens out onto the deck, while Matt and I take that moment to regroup. We let out a joint sigh and lean in to hug and kiss each other. Matt cradles me in his arms and buries his face in my neck, and I can tell he’s trying to keep a grip on his own emotions.

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