For once, I didn’t feel the urge to run. I felt the urge to stay, tolinger, to let myself be a part of the moment instead of waiting for it to end.
Maybe time wasn’t such a jerk after all. Maybe it knew exactly what it was doing.
“Mama,” I said gently. “This is Marco.”
EPILOGUE
MARCO
2 years later . . .
Iwas nine years old the first time someone told me I was unwanted.
They didn’t use that exact word. No—adults were more subtle with their cruelty. I was standing on the porch holding my only bag, a battered nylon duffel that held a toothbrush, two shirts, and a pair of jeans that had never really fit me without a belt. My social worker—her name was Mrs. Diaz—had gently placed her hand on my shoulder and said something that sounded reassuring, but what she really meant was,“Sorry, kid. Maybe next time.”
And just like that, I was packed back into her beat-up silver Honda Civic, headed to the next place that didn’t want me either.
The house smelled like old cigarettes and canned soup. Sodium and neglect. The foster parents never smiled—never even pretended to. They signed forms like I was a package from UPS and then disappeared into another room, shutting the door behind them. At night, I lay awake in a bed that felt too stiff,staring at a water stain on the ceiling, listening to whispered arguments from downstairs.
Foster homes always whispered their arguments, as if pretending to be quiet made the anger less real.
And now my house was quiet. But not that dead kind of quiet; the empty silence I used to dread. Not the silence that settled into corners and seeped into walls—the kind that made me strain to hear what was happening in the kitchen, bracing myself for the inevitable argument or a door slamming shut, or worse, for someone to quietly leave and never come back.
No—this quiet was different. It had a pulse. It breathed. It had Valentina’s fingerprints all over it. I could spot them everywhere. Smudged on the fridge door, scattered across the wineglasses she insisted on drinking juice out of now.
This—thiswas the quiet I craved.
This quiet meant someone lived here with me. Someone had stayed, willingly, not because a social worker had signed some forms; not because they were obligated or paid to or just had no better place to go.
Valentina had chosen this, chosenme, in all my exhausting forms.
Even on the days when I came home frustrated from the physical therapy she demanded I go to, my shoulder aching so badly I could barely pretend otherwise, she was there, sliding the ice pack across the counter without a word, knowing I didn’t want to talk about it but that I needed someone there anyway.
This quiet was filled with her small habits—the pillows she left scattered across the couch even though I kept putting them back, the way she hummed when she made coffee, her stubborn refusal to fold laundry in a way that made sense. It was the sound of dishes quietly clinking in the sink at midnight, because pregnancy made her crave pancakes at all hours, and the rustleof pages turning in the dark as she read another chapter in the book about childbirth that secretly terrified me.
It wasn’t planned. She’d been on birth control, meticulous about it, an alarm set on her phone, same time every night. She’d missed a few, and I guess those few really made the difference.
When she showed me the test, I’d stood there staring at it, dumbfounded. She’d shifted nervously, cracking jokes I barely heard—something sarcastic about the odds—but beneath the jokes, I’d seen it in her eyes. The panic. The doubt. The fear she’d spent years mastering how to hide. And yet somehow, behind all that, I saw something else too—a glimpse of wonder, that tentative kind of hope.
It hit me harder later, lying awake next to her. I couldn’t stop myself from reaching out and pressing my palm gently against her stomach. She’d sighed softly, half-asleep, and curled closer, and that was it. Something in me shifted, cracked me wide-open. Because I’d never even let myself want this—never dared to imagine a family. Not seriously anyway. The thought had always felt dangerous. Too fragile. Too far out of reach for someone like me.
I’d spent my whole life believing certain things weren’t meant for me. Stability, home, permanence—they were for other people. Luckier people. People who hadn’t grown up counting on nothing and expecting even less.
But Valentina had always been good at proving me wrong.
She’d defied every expectation; crashed through every boundary I’d set up. Now here she was, doing it again. Shattering one more wall I didn’t realize I’d built so high.
And yeah, I was scared as hell. I was terrified of becoming Gerard—terrified I’d be another foster parent fumbling around blindly, breaking the promises I silently made every time I thought about holding our baby.
But I knew deep down it wouldn’t be like that. Because this child wasn’t a burden, wasn’t paperwork, wasn’t something that had been forced onto either of us. It was ours. Entirely ours. Created despite every precaution, every safeguard, and every damn pill.
And weeks later, when we found out it was a boy—ourboy—it got even more real. Valentina had stared at the sonogram with wide, terrified eyes, as if suddenly knowing the gender made the baby less theoretical, made it more of the tiny human we’d be expected to raise. She’d squeezed my hand so tightly I thought my fingers would lose circulation, and later that night, she’d sat on our bed and listed every single reason she’d be the world’s worst mother.
“I left my hair dryer plugged in last week,” she said, her voice way too shaky for something so trivial. She sat cross-legged on our bed, surrounded by half-folded laundry she’d already forgotten about. “What if I do that again, Marco? What if I forget and he touches it? Or the candle—I fell asleep and left it burning twice.Twice!” She looked at me like it was a full confession—like she’d committed an actual crime. I wanted to smile, but I knew better. Valentina wouldn’t appreciate my amusement. Not in this moment.
Instead I sat down next to her, nudging aside a pile of socks she had no intention of ever matching. “I left the stove on overnight once,” I reminded her quietly.
Her eyes snapped up, eyebrows pulling tight. “You?”
