⸻
I want to be honest that the following months were considerably harder than the simple legal clarity Priscilla had given me that first morning. I loved Willa completely, without a single ounce of hesitation, but I couldn’t fully shake the strange, unsettled feeling of holding a daughter who carried none of my own genetic history, only the history of a woman I’d met exactly once on my own front porch.
⸻
I called Adrienne myself, almost three weeks after that first visit, once I’d had enough time to sit with everything without the initial shock still clouding every decision.
⸻
“I’ve been thinking about what you said,” I told her. “About not wanting to take her from me.”
“I meant every word of it,” Adrienne said.
⸻
“I don’t think I want you to disappear either,” I said. “I’ve spent three weeks trying to figure out what that actually means, practically, and I still don’t have a complete answer. But I don’t think erasing you from her life is the right instinct, even if it might feel easier in the short term.”
⸻
We met for coffee the following week, careful and considerably less emotional than our first conversation, both of us working through exactly what kind of relationship made sense given circumstances neither of us had ever once considered planning for.
