He didn’t try to explain.
“I used part of my savings. A private agency. I staged the basket so the choice would be yours, not mine to hand you.”
I pressed my palms against my head.
“Why didn’t you just tell me you loved me, Raymond? You could’ve told me on any single day since you brought them into my life.”
“Gratitude’s a terrible foundation,” he said quietly. “I didn’t want you loving me because I gave you the boys. I wanted you to choose me the way you chose them.”
“Why didn’t you just tell me?”
I looked at him.
The steady man who’d stayed by my side through it all. The one who never dated because he was already waiting.
“I’m furious with you,” I whispered.
“I know.”
“And I don’t know what I feel underneath that yet.”
Raymond nodded. “You don’t have to.”
“Go home, Raymond. I need to think.”
He went without a word.
“I’m furious with you.”
***
Three days later, I stood on my friend’s porch with two coffees and shaking hands.
“I don’t know what this is,” I told him right by the door. “But I want to find out honestly.”
Raymond smiled like a man who’d waited half his life for that sentence.
“I don’t know what this is.”
***
Weeks turned into a slow, real thing.
On Sunday, Caleb and Noah came for dinner. Raymond carved the roast.
The wicker basket now sat on a shelf in the living room. It had become a keepsake, just as Raymond had intended when he took it after the twins entered foster care.
I realized that I’d been chosen all along. And I finally let myself be.
