Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 94624 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 378(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 94624 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 378(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
Kola put Emil on the swing in the backyard, and Danique was so impressed that she went next.
“Your mother is really lovely,” I told Kola as we stood and watched her close her eyes in the wind, enjoying herself. “She’s responsible for you being here.”
“I agree,” he told me. “I’ll write to her.”
“I suspect she’ll love that.”
He turned to me then. “But I don’t want you to think that––”
“Stop,” I ordered. “I know all about your heart and my place in it.”
“Good,” he said, draping an arm around my shoulders and kissing my cheek.
Kola got Danique down once she was ready, and I saw him ask her a question and saw her immediately lift her arms in answer. She was hugging him and crying, and he squeezed her tight. My son was a great hugger, ever since he was little, because she was right, he’d always been a loving child.
I went inside, got a box of tissues, and returned, passing them to Emil to take to his mother. He bolted off the porch and went to her, and she kissed and hugged him as well, and then Kola gestured at Emil, who immediately walked into his arms.
“You have raised a good man,” Mikhail said to Sam as they were now sitting together at our picnic table.
“Thank you, so have you. Your daughter is pretty great too.”
“She needs to be more serious about everything.”
“Or not,” I chimed in, turning to look at him. “And I don’t know about you, but being a lawyer is a fairly serious pursuit.”
“Yes, agreed, but I was always certain both of my children would be doctors like me.”
“But your wife is a teacher,” Sam said flatly, as Kola, Emil, and Danique joined us on the deck. “And that’s the very definition of service.”
“This is true,” Danique agreed, laughing.
Mikhail could not help smiling at his wife.
“Please stay for dinner,” I offered. “We would love that.”
“Oh, that would be great,” Hannah said from the doorway. “I want Katya to meet Jake, who’s on his way over with Harper, and she wants to try the swing too. Plus, Kola has albums full of pictures that I’m sure Danique would like to see.”
“I would,” she said, turning to me. “We would love to have dinner.”
“But we don’t want to impose.” Mikhail wanted to stay, I could tell, but he was worried, perhaps, that Sam didn’t want that.
“You’re not imposing at all,” Sam assured him. “Let me fire up the grill. Do burgers and hot dogs work?”
Katya caught her breath. “Oh, I––”
“It’s okay,” Hannah rushed out, putting her hand on Katya’s arm, who had joined her in the doorway. “Dad has a second baby grill out there just for my veggie burgers. No meat has ever been on that.”
“You are also a vegetarian?”
“I’m a pescatarian at the moment,” Hannah admitted. “I hope to cut that out as well, but it’s been so hard to give up spicy tuna rolls.”
“You need meat for your brain,” Mikhail told her. “I tell Katya the same.”
“Actually,” Kola chimed in, “a lot of those studies that talk about the importance of red meat for cognitive function and development have been proven false. You can just take the vitamins that are in meat instead.”
“Yes, but––”
“Plus, fish, lean poultry, beans, things like that are actually better for you.”
“Didn’t your research team actually conclude something similar?” Emil asked his father.
Mikhail glanced at his daughter, his son, and then returned to Kola. “Yes.”
“But you can have a burger,” he told Mikhail with a grin. “And there’s leftover chili you can put on top of it that you’re gonna love.”
Clearly Mikhail was enchanted with Kola and smiled wide.
After a moment, Kola walked over to him, Mikhail put his highball glass down quickly, and when Kola opened his arms, he stepped into them.
Danique spun around to face the yard, and I took the tissue box back from Emil and offered her some more.
“Be sure to give Kola your email address before you leave. He wants to write to you.”
She grabbed my arm so tight. “Jory, I cannot begin to tell you how much I appreciate you sharing your son with me. I told Mikhail, do not contact Mykola, contact his parents instead. I know him. I know how attached he was to me and…he loves you and your husband so much.”
“Thank you,” I said, putting my hand over hers.
“Giving him up for adoption—I don’t want you to think I came to that decision easily or…my mother loved him so much, but she wanted him to have a family to dote on him and be with him. I was in school, and my mother had to pass him to so many people, which is good, I know, for a child to have many different experiences, but also, they need structure and schedule and knowing there is the one they can always turn to.”