Page 20 of The Autumn We Fell in Love

As if that wasn’t enough to keep her busy, she’d gotten baby fever right in the middle of it.

Well, not baby fever exactly. More like foster parenting fever.

Hollis grew up in foster care and knew how badly good foster families were needed. Between that and her unmet longing for children of her own, we decided to foster.

The triplets were the first kids placed in our home.

They turned out to be our last.

When circumstances shifted and going back to their biological family was no longer a viable option, they were put up for adoption.

We couldn’t bear to let them go. We’d taken them in when they were three and knew how much it would rock them to be moved to a new family again — and how painfully we would miss them.

So we gave them a forever home and they made us a family.

I’ve never been happier. Even with all the preteen sass.

I’m still teaching too, but less so. I’ve been writing more, and in between that I homeschool our kids. Starting around third grade, they’d become frustrated at traditional school, wanting to learn more faster and never quite getting the chance to do so.

So now I teach them. And lots of times, they teach me.

And in between teaching, when I write my poems, I write of love — this time of the experience of it, not only of the longing for and wondering about it.

It’s a pretty sweet deal, what the five of us have got going on.

And it’s about to get sweeter. Because we’re heading to Hollis’s first-ever poetry reading as a professional.

She participated in a few readings as part of her education, of course, but nothing since. That’s not common for a woman of her talent, but she’s always put the kids first and refused to participate in anything that interfered with their lives.

Tonight, though, we get to celebrate her.

I pull into a parking spot outside the downtown bookshop and we all unload.

“Remember,” I mutter to the kids as we head inside, “pretend to be excited.”

Barrett throws me another salute, Will snorts, and Elizabeth — you guessed it — rolls her eyes. I don’t know how that girl isn’t perpetually dizzy.

The bookstore is packed. I recognize colleagues from the college, and more than a few students too. I wave at Matthew when I spy him across the shop, and weave through the crowd to his side, kids following behind.

“Wow,” I say, surveying the shop’s interior. “It’s a packed house.”

He shrugs. “Your lady is a pretty popular professor.”

He’s not wrong. Thanks to her love of the written word, her welcoming demeanor, and her newly discovered tendency to crack hilarious jokes in class, Hollis has quickly become one of the school’s most beloved faculty.

I’m so damned proud of her.

Accompanied by the bookshop owner, Hollis steps to the mic set up at the back of the store in front of an array of chairs. The owner begins introducing her and we all find a seat.

Then she’s up. She steps to the microphone, opens her latest published collection — and scans the crowd with eyes that, I realize, are too wide, rimmed with panic.

She’s looking for me.

I give a surreptitious wave. Elizabeth rolls her eyes for the zillionth time that day, but Hollis sees. Smiling, I give my wife a thumbs up and the ASL sign forI love you.

Then I cross my eyes and stick out my tongue. Now she’s struggling to bite back a laugh, but the panic is gone.

One steadying breath later, she begins to read.

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