“She looks like she belongs with you.”
“We’re taking it,” I replied, and that was the moment the paperwork stopped being paperwork and started being our life.
No one came forward. No one called. The days became weeks, and whether the baby would become ours shifted into the reality that she already was. A few months later, we adopted her.
We named her Betty.
Our daughter grew into the kind of child who rearranged the house just by existing in it. She had opinions about breakfast before she could tie her shoes. She collected rocks from every park we ever crossed.
No one came forward. No one called.
When Betty was six, she climbed into my lap and said, “Daddy, if I had a hundred dads, I’d still pick you.”
“What if one of the others had better snacks?” I joked.
Betty thought about that seriously for a moment. Then she said, “But they can’t be you.”
Those 10 years passed the way good years do: quickly while you’re inside them. And for all the certainty of those years, one quiet question never fully left me.
Who had chosen our station to leave Betty there… and why us?
“Daddy, if I had a hundred dads, I’d still pick you.”
***
It was just after sunset when the knock came last Thursday.
“I’ll get it,” I told Sarah, heading for the door.
A woman stood on the porch in a dark coat and sunglasses she no longer needed in the evening light. Her fingers were pale where they gripped the strap of her bag.
“I need to talk to you about the baby from 10 years ago,” she said without warning.
Every muscle in my body locked. Behind me, I heard Sarah’s chair scrape.
