Page 97 of My Fixation

We didn’t have a traditional courtship. Considering the way our relationship started, that was probably never in the cards. So it makes sense that we didn’t have a traditional engagement either.

Conor proposed at the cemetery. We’d gone to visit my parents. Something we’d done several times a year since the day Neil gave me their names. When we arrived, I thought we’d come to leave flowers. Instead, I found the old headstone gone. In its place stood a new one.

Polished granite. Beautiful without being extravagant. Their names engraved in deep black lettering.

Thomas Kane

Catherine Kane

Beneath them were words that hadn’t been there before.

Beloved Husband and Wife.

Forever Loved.

And below that…

Cherished Parents.

Two words. Two words I’d spent years believing could never belong to me. I couldn’t speak. Couldn’t breathe. Conor stood beside me, his hand resting quietly against my back.

“I thought they deserved more than names and dates.” His voice had been soft. “They deserved to have the world know they loved each other. And they deserved to have everyone know they were your parents.”

I cried harder that day than I had at their graves the first time. Because for the first time, someone had honored not only the people who gave me life, but the little boy who’d spent decades believing they never wanted him.

When I finally turned to Conor, he was already on one knee. No speech or elaborate plan. Just the man I loved, holding out a ring. And just like a year ago, his family stands behind him.

“I’ve spent a year proving you belong with my family.” His eyes never left mine. “I think it’s about time I made it official.”

I laughed through my tears. The easiest answer of my life.

“Yes.”

Standing between the people who gave me life and the man who taught me how to live it, I finally understood. I had never been abandoned. I had simply spent years waiting for the family that was always meant to find me.

I force myself to shake away the memory before I embarrass myself all over again. Five years later, and Conor can still bring me to tears without even trying. Honestly, I think I’ve cried more in the last five years than I did in the thirty before them. For most of my life, tears were dangerous. A weakness to swallow down and lock away. Somewhere along the way, that changed. Now they come without shame. The tears still surprise me, but they’re different now. They don’t come from loneliness. Or grief. Or the certainty that no one would notice if I disappeared.

They come because, after a lifetime of believing I wasn’t worth loving, I found a life so full of it that some days my heart doesn’t know what else to do. So it cries.

“Dad, Cathy needs to be changed, and I’m not doing it.”

Our oldest son, Cillian Kieran Murphy, deposits his baby sister into my arms before taking three quick steps backward. Smart kid.

“I did the last one.”

“You watched me do the last one,” I remind him.

“Same thing.”

His expression never changes. The little brat has perfected Murphy sarcasm in record time. I look down at Catherine—Cathy to everyone except Mom, who insists on using her full name. Catherine Alessia Murphy.

She blinks up at me with complete innocence. The innocence of a three-month-old who has absolutely destroyed her diaper. Wonderful. Cillian snickers.

I point toward the changing table. “You’re still helping.”

He groans dramatically. “At least I’m not changing her.”

“No,” I agree. “You’re just learning.”