She labored for hours, growing weaker with every passing minute. And somewhere in the middle of the night, she grabbed my wrist so hard I still remember the pressure of her fingers.
“I can’t raise them alone,” she whispered. “And if something happens to me… promise me you’ll take care of them. Please.”
I nodded. What else could I do?
She smiled like I’d lifted something enormous off her chest, and an hour later, she delivered two tiny girls, Nika and Angela. And by morning, their mother was gone.
“Promise me you’ll take care of them. Please.”
My coworkers said the babies would go to the state.
I went home that night, sat at my kitchen table for a long time, and thought about a dying girl’s hand on my wrist.
Two weeks later, I started the adoption paperwork.
I won’t pretend it was easy. But it was the best thing I ever did.
I never built another family. The girls were the only family I ever chose.
I won’t pretend it was easy.
***
“I was scared,” I told them, standing in the rain outside the house they’d bought together — the house they’d invited me into because they’d said they wanted to take care of me.
“Scared,” Nika repeated, her laugh turning brittle. “You let us grow up believing our father never wanted us.”
“I didn’t even know he existed until that letter arrived,” I said. “Your mother never told me anything about him. She was dying, Nika. She grabbed my hand and asked me to take care of you, and that’s all I had.”
“I didn’t even know he existed until that letter arrived.”
“But you got the letter, Jessie,” Angela said. “And you said nothing.”
