She was almost to the door when she turned back around. “I’ll have to send everything through for approval, and I won’t be able to tell you anything definitive until after the second interview, but everything looks good so far. Do you have any idea what you’d like to name her?”

“Kallie Lenora,” I replied without hesitation. Rebecca looked at me expectantly, and I realized that Alice and I had never discussed a last name for her.

“I’ll just put it down as a hyphenated version for now,” she said as she left.

When I turned back to Alice, she wasn’t smiling like I’d expected her to be. In fact, she looked kind of sad. I went to her immediately and hugged her to me, asking her to tell me what was wrong.

“Nothing, really,” she replied. “I guess I’m just…will you really be okay if her mother takes her away from us after a few years?”

I sighed. “We don’t know that she will, yet. And I’m sure it’ll be hard, if that happens. But I’d rather she have good formative years with us than bouncing around the system. It’ll work out, Al.”

She nodded against my shoulder, but didn’t say anything else. I realized, belatedly, that an impending separation like that, even the prospect of one, wasn’t the best thing for her at this point in her life. “I can call tomorrow and have them stop the process if you want me to,” I said into her hair. She shook her head.

“No, I want her. You’re right, any time will be better than none. It’s just hard for me,” she said simply, and after that we didn’t talk about it again. I think she had to make the conscious choice to enjoy what time she had with the baby, and she made it.

**********

The next week was spent getting one of the bedrooms ready for Kallie to come home to. We bought a bassinet from a baby store for our room, but we wanted to get the nursery finished anyway. Tina had offered Angelica’s old one, but Alice and I didn’t like the idea of Kallie using a hand me down bed, even if she didn’t know enough to care.

We decided to paint the nursery green. Jenny was insistent that we paint it yellow, but I hated yellow and Alice wasn’t really a fan either. Jenny pouted a little when we told her our choice, but Shane said something in her ear that calmed her down. After that, Jenny shrugged and agreed to go baby shopping with us.

Alice wanted to look at cribs first, which made sense. We went to the baby store where we’d gotten our bassinet, and she found one that she liked pretty quickly. But when Shane looked it over, all she did was shake her head. “This is really expensive. Let me get some plans and I’ll make it for you.”

“I can look on Google,” Jenny said, and for some reason it made me laugh really hard. Alice looked at me like I was insane, Jenny looked mildly startled, and Shane just glared. But it was still funny, at least to me.

We spent the next few days organizing the room. Shane and Jenny’s yard got a workbench added to it, and Shane spent hours out there building and finishing the crib for us. When she finally brought it to the house, I was shocked at how pretty it was. She’d even attached the pad to the bottom of it, and there was already bedding in it that coordinated with the nursery. “Jenny went out and bought that the other day,” Shane told me after she’d carried it inside.

Our decorating attempts had paid off, in a pretty simplistic way. The walls were a muted shade of dark green, and the border was white. There was a rocking recliner, and the usual baby furniture. We’d hung a mobile from the ceiling, and with the crib in there, it was perfect.

Shane nodded her approval, and I could only hope the foster services would do the same when they saw it.