Years passed. The house was warm but silent, missing the laughter of children.
One day, as we watched the sunset from the porch, I turned to him and said, “Arthur… what if we adopted?”
He looked at me for a long moment, then nodded slowly. “If that’s what you want.”
“It is,” I said. “Family can be chosen.”
And so we did.
First came Ella — a small, frightened girl with big brown eyes who’d lost her parents in a fire. Then Liam and Mia, a pair of twins who clung to each other as though the world might vanish if they let go.
Our home, once silent, filled with laughter and footsteps and the sound of little feet racing down the halls. The townsfolk whispered, of course. They always did. “Strange couple,” they said. “Odd arrangement.” But their words never reached our door.
