Page 86 of Something Like Shelter

Each time I heard it, my heart felt close to bursting.

She wasn’t mine, not by blood. But she was mine in every way that counted.

I was there for midnight feedings. I was there, sneaking her downstairs in the early mornings so Willa could catch up on sleep. I was there when she was sick, when she got her first real boo-boo, when she got up, when she went to bed, when she said her first word, when she crawled for the first time.

It was three months ago when Willa, uncharacteristically shy, sat down next to me on the couch with Adelaide on her lap and asked me if it would be okay for her to teach Adelaide to call me Dada.

It felt like the biggest gift she could possibly give me. And I planned never to take it for granted.

“Thank God these things are spill-proof,” Willa said as she snatched it up. “The cleaners just finished an hour ago.”

“It’s so strange to see this place so empty,” I said, looking around the vast, hollow space.

Sure, we’d been slowly emptying the place out for months. Once we stayed at my house, neither of us wanted to leave. Slowly but surely, things that were necessary or important to Willa found their way into the house, closets, guest rooms, or basement. Until she and Adelaide were woven into every corner of the home the same way I was. Exactly the way they should be.

But this was a whole new kind of empty. There wasn’t so much as a cup in any of the cabinets. The only thing being transferred to the next owners were the window treatments. And the bottle of wine on the counter.

“I know. I never thought I would leave this house. But it hasn’t felt like home in so long. Adelaide barely even remembers this place.”

That was true.

She’d been at my house for the largest chunk of her life. And, now, for the rest of her time home with us.

“Yeah,” I agreed, feeling the heaviness of the box in my pocket.

I’d had it for weeks.

But I knew that it was a question I had to ask in this house, before we left it in our past.

“Want to take one last tour of the place?” I asked.

“Sure,” she agreed, but it was clear her heart wasn’t in the place anymore. It was in my house. With me. And I wanted to make it clear I wanted her and Adelaide there with me forever.

It was in the primary bathroom that I reached to pull the box out of my pocket.

“You know, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what my future might look like. A home. A family. Kids running around. A dog underfoot. Christmas lights. Sunday dinners. All of it.

“And somewhere along the way, I stopped viewing those things as some vague future I might have.” I reached out to take her hand, my fingers brushing over her knuckles. “I started imagining you. You and Adelaide. You in my kitchen. Her running around the backyard with Tuna.”

“Owen…”

“I know it wasn’t supposed to happen. You were a client. I was just supposed to fix your bathroom and move on. Not fall in love with you.”

Willa’s eyes went watery. Her hand was shaky in mine.

“I love you. And Adelaide. I love the life we’ve started creating, even if neither of us meant to build it.”

Finally, I lowered down to one knee.

“I want the ordinary stuff. I want the hard stuff. I want mornings when nobody slept and dinners where the kids are screaming and the dog eats their vegetables passed under the table. I want your good days and your bad ones. I want to be the person you call when something goes wrong, and the person you come to when everything is right.”

I opened the ring box.

“I want to be your husband. And I want to be Adelaide’s father. I want to spend the rest of my life proving to her that she has someone who will always show up for her. And I want to spend the rest of my life showing up for you too. Will you marry me?”

“Yes,” she said, already crying. “A million times, yes.”

I slid the ring on her finger and got to my feet to wrap my arms around my girls.