I didn’t hesitate.
When the social worker gently asked whether I understood what I was taking on, I said the only thing I could.
“They’re not a problem. They’re my family.”
My mom had raised the three of us alone, and she had raised me to understand exactly what that sentence meant.
My fiancée, Jenna, moved in two weeks later to “help.”
At first, it looked like a miracle.
She packed the girls’ lunches. She braided their hair before school. She bought them matching backpacks.
She looked me in the eyes over the dinner table and said, “I finally have the two little sisters I’ve always dreamed of.”
I remember how grateful I felt.
I remember thinking I was the luckiest exhausted man alive.
Those first weeks had nearly broken me.
I’d wake at five to make lunches, work a full day, come home to homework and nightmares and two little girls who sometimes cried for a mother who wasn’t coming back.
