A few days later, Alejandro and I were sitting in his office at home having just received a call from the adoption agency.
‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ I breathed as the excitement fluttered in my stomach.
He nodded. ‘As long as Lucia agrees, obviously.’
‘Of course,’ I nodded. ‘It looks like you might just get your heir after all.’
He reached for my hand and pulled me up from the chair. ‘I told you, I don’t need an heir,’ he frowned.
‘I know,’ I whispered.
‘Shall we go and speak to her then?’
I took a deep breath. ‘Yes. Let’s do this.’
Together, we walked through the house to find Lucia eating cereal in the kitchen.
‘Hey,’ she looked up and smiled at us.
‘Hi, sweetheart,’ I said. ‘Alejandro and I have something we want to talk to you about.’
She swallowed her cereal and blinked at us. ‘Okay?’
‘We were thinking about what you were saying a couple of weeks ago. About wanting to finish high school and go to college one day. You’re such a smart kid, Lucia, and you should be able to do anything you want to with your life,’ I said.
She nodded. ‘Yeah. But that was just talk. It will be pretty hard to do being a single mom to a kid, won’t it?’ she said with a shrug.
‘We know that. That’s why we spoke with a lady from the adoption agency,’ Alejandro said, ‘We want you to be able to go to college, Lucia, and do all of those things that you’ve dreamed about. And we want to be the ones who help you to do that. We can have the papers drawn up today if that’s what you want too? But, obviously, you’re seventeen years old, and the choice is all yours.’
‘You’d pay for me to go to college?’ she asked.
‘Of course,’ I replied.
She blinked at us with tears in her eyes and then she looked down at her bump, rubbing her hands over it lovingly. ‘I know that it would probably be for the best,’ she choked down a sob. ‘I mean, you guys have been amazing to me. You could give this baby a much better life than I could. It’s just that … I’m not sure I could just …’ she started to sob.
I rushed around the breakfast bar to her and wrapped my arm around her shoulder.
‘Jesus!’ Alejandro said as he ran his hands through his hair in exasperation. ‘We don’t want to adopt your baby, Lucia.’
Her head snapped up and she looked between the two of us. ‘What?’
‘We want to adopt you, sweetheart,’ I said with a smile. ‘If you’ll have us. You can stay here anyway, but this just makes it all a little more formal and legal.’
She started to cry again and Alejandro stared at me with a look of bewilderment on his face. ‘You don’t have to decide right now,’ I said as I kissed her on the top of her head.
‘Are you kidding me?’ she started to laugh then, wiping her tears on her sleeve. ‘You guys seriously want to adopt me?’
‘Yes,’ we said in unison.
‘Then, hell yes. I’m in,’ she shrieked as she jumped from her stool and pulled me into a hug. ‘Get over here Daddy A,’ she said as she beckoned Alejandro to us.
He walked over and wrapped his arms around the two of us. ‘Please, don’t ever call me that again, Lucia,’ he said with a laugh.
‘Hmm, I’ll think of something more appropriate,’ she said with a smile as she buried her head against his chest.
He looked over the top of her head at me and smiled. This wasn’t the family we had planned, but it was the one we had, and the one we were thankful for.
