Gretchen’s four full-blood siblings. If she feels any sense of abandonment from not getting to grow up alongside them, she doesn’t let it show. Cheyenne and Miguel made the right decision in choosing adoption.
And Gretchen was right; she’s had a great life.
She tells Cheyenne and Miguel about her parents, Drew and Reagan, and life back in Illinois. I’m able to chime in with my own anecdotal stories of the years I spent growing up with them, too. We smile and laugh, reminiscing over our shared history.Our history. It may only be for the sake of catching her birth parents up to speed on everything they’ve missed, but it does something for me, too—it fills the cracks and hollow spaces where doubt and regret used to be and replaces them with hope and undiluted adoration.
“How long have you two been together?” Cheyenne asks as she swipes through a photo album on Gretchen’s phone from Drew and Reagan’s wedding.
I hesitate because“since yesterday”sounds not only ridiculous, but also like a lie.
“Officially,” Gretchen starts, “not very long, but we’ve been inevitable for years.”
She winks at me before swiping to another photo. Just a casual one-eyed blink, like her words didn’t send my heart into a free fall behind my sternum.
“When do you guys head back to Chicago?” Miguel asks.
“We fly back day after tomorrow,” Gretchen supplies.
Miguel and Cheyenne share a look, wide grins in place.
“Listen,” Cheyenne says, “it’s probably more than you bargained for, and there’s no pressure, but we’re having a family get-together tomorrow and we’d love for you to join us. It’ll be mostly Miguel’s family, but there’s a lot of them.” She chuckles and Miguel offers an impish shrug. “Winona and her husband will be here, too, and I know they’d love to meet you.”
“Oh…um…” Gretchen fumbles over her words and turns to me,the conflict in her eyes a tell for that brain of hers that’s working overtime right now.
Tomorrow is her birthday. It’s not that she doesn’t want more time with her family, but rather, she doesn’t know if they recognize the significance of the date.
It’s a mother’s intuition, perhaps, that has Cheyenne adding, “It’s something we do every year, Gretchen,” she looks to her husband briefly and then back to her first-born daughter, “on your birthday.”
Gretchen blinks rapidly as I stroke her back with my open palm. Of course they remember.
“The whole family? You…every year…a-all of you?” The words tumble and fall over each other, her throat tight with restrained emotion.
“Yes. All of us. Every year,” Miguel replies with a kind smile.
“I wish I could say that my family would be here, but…well, they haven’t been in contact since I left the reservation. It’s just me, my sister and her family now.” Cheyenne’s eyes lie full of sorrow. A daughter who made some mistakes, as teenagers do, went through the unimaginable and whose parents, instead of offering support, shunned and disowned her.
Thank God for Winona.
“But, if it’s too much too soon, we completely understand,” Cheyenne adds, honing in on Gretchen’s blank expression.
I grab her hand, drawing her gaze to me. She wants to say yes, but she’s overwhelmed. “Yeah?” I whisper quietly, only for her, and nudge her knee with mine.
She nods. The unshed tears glisten beneath her lashes before she turns back to Cheyenne and Miguel. “Yeah, okay.”
An hour,three photo albums, and countless tears later, Gretchen finally musters up the courage to meet her siblings.
Cheyenne and Miguel take the short walk down the street to pick up the kids while Gretchen and I wait at the house.
When the door clicks shut behind them, I allow her a few moments to breathe in her own space while I discreetly prop my phone on a nearby shelf. She hasn’t asked me to document anything, but I know she’ll want to remember every detail of this day.
Gretchen paces the living room, thumbnail between her teeth, as I approach her. “I can’t believe this is happening,” she whispers. The improbability of today’s events shines bright all over her, as fresh now as it was two hours ago when she knocked on the door.
I haul her into my chest for a hug. “I’m so proud of you.”
She steps back and promptly begins wiping under eyes and combing her fingers through her hair. Before she can ask, I say, “Beautiful.”
Shadows drift across the front window and I plant a chaste kiss on her lips, tell her she’s got this and press record on my phone. I duck around the corner to let them have this moment for themselves. I’m out of everyone else’s view but I still have a line of sight to where Gretchen stands at the threshold of the living room. The front door swings open on a held breath that swells the air with anticipation.
What comes next happens so fast, yet feels like slow-motion all at the same time. The Ortegas stand behind their four children in the entryway, Gretchen a few strides in front of them. The pause between them like that big resolute breath you take when you stand on the cusp of something you know is about to change your entire world. Gretchen offers a shy wave and quiet “hello” as her brothers and sisters close in. I don’t even think Gretchen expects it until it happens.
