We got used to her pretty fast in other areas, too. Before long, I never thought about just Alice and me by ourselves anymore. It was always me, Alice, and Kallie, no matter what I happened to be thinking about. I never even entertained the notion that her biological mother might someday decide to step in and ruin our little bit of perfection. That was probably very naïve of me, but I couldn’t seem to think about her in terms of anything less than forever.

Alice was more cautious with her affections, at least in the very beginning. She doted on her and was very loving toward her, but I would sometimes catch her visibly holding back from loving her completely. It made me very, very sad. I could understand it, and sometimes thought that maybe I should be holding back a little bit myself, but I couldn’t do it. Kallie was just way too beautiful for me to consider it for more than a few seconds at a time.

The more I thought about it, the more I thought it unfair to Kallie to think that way at all. It wasn’t her fault her mother had pretty much abandoned her. It didn’t mean that she deserved to be loved any less for it. I tried to express this to Alice, and she agreed with me, but I could tell it was just on the surface. While I knew that even the possibility of the baby’s impending departure weighed very heavily on Alice, I couldn’t stop myself from loving her even more despite it.

Some nights, when I was rocking Kallie to sleep in either the chair in the living room or the one in the nursery, I’d hold her close to me and think back to all the appointments and psychological tests we’d had to go through to allow her into our lives. Alice had scoffed at the barrage of tests and proclaimed that it was unfair, that all straight couples had to do was fuck and they got a baby, and no one ever checked on them. But when gay people tried, it was worse than the Spanish Inquisition. I’d laughed at her and told her that they just wanted to be sure the baby would be well taken care of, and some nights, when I was holding her like that and the only sound in the silence was her breathing and the occasional baby murmur, I felt like it was all worth it. That no matter what tests I needed to do, I’d do them in a second if it meant she could stay with us just a little bit longer. I’d fallen head over heels in love with her and all she had to do was smile at me.