For two years, our elderly neighbor ate at our table, played with our five kids, and answered to “Grandpa” as naturally as if he’d always belonged there. But when we tried to make him officially part of our family, his reaction made me wonder how much we really knew about him.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Walter went pale when he saw the adoption papers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Not emotional.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Not surprised.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Frightened.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
He lowered the folder onto our dining room table so carefully that for one strange second, I thought there was something dangerous inside it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
“There’s something I have to tell you,” he said. “I was going to anyway. I’ve left it too long already.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\nThen he looked at my five kids, still eating his birthday cake.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n
\n“Could they finish in the other room?”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\nThat was when I knew something was wrong.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\nTwo years earlier, Walter had moved into the little house next door.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\nHe was 86 then, recently widowed, and so lonely that he once admitted the silence in his new house was worse than the silence in the home he’d shared with his wife for 41 years.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\nOur house doesn’t have that problem.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n\nMy husband and I have five kids.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n
\nThere is always a shoe missing, someone yelling from upstairs, something sticky on the counter, and a grocery bill that makes me reconsider whether everyone actually needs to eat every day.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\nWalter started coming around when the kids played outside.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\nSoon he was pitching balls, fixing a loose bicycle chain, and drinking coffee at our kitchen table.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\nEventually, I stopped inviting him to dinner because inviting him implied there was a chance he wouldn’t be there.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\nThe kids started calling him Grandpa.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\nNobody suggested it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n\nIt just happened.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n
\nThen Walter got sick that spring.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\nIt wasn’t serious, but sitting in a hospital waiting area while people kept asking what my relationship was to him made something painfully clear.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\nI wasn’t his daughter.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\nI wasn’t anything, legally speaking.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\nSo we researched adult adoption.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\nFor Walter’s 88th birthday, we decided to ask if he’d let us make official what had already happened.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n\nInstead, he sent my children out of the room.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n
\nMy husband sat beside me.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\nWalter stared at the folder.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n“I can’t let you do this without telling you why I came here,” he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n“Why you came here?”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\nHe nodded toward the wall separating our property from his.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n“I knew you lived next door when I bought that house.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n\nI actually laughed.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n
\nIt was one sharp sound because I thought I had misunderstood him.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n“What?”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n“I didn’t end up beside you by accident, Abby.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\nMy husband reached for my hand.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\nI pulled mine away, not because of him.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\nI suddenly needed both hands free.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n\n“How did you know me?”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n
\nWalter looked older than I’d ever seen him.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n“After Margaret died, I took one of those ancestry tests.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\nThat didn’t answer anything.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n“Okay.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n“I wasn’t interested in finding out whether I was twelve percent this or twenty percent that.” He swallowed. “I was looking for someone.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n“Who?”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n\n“My granddaughter.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n
\nI stared at him.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\nHe looked directly at me.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n“Her name was Abby.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\nI felt my husband turn toward me.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\nWalter continued before I could speak.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n“My daughter was named Kate. She had a baby when she was 19. A little girl she placed for adoption.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n\nThe room seemed to shrink around the three of us.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n
\n“No,” I said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\nWalter’s eyes filled.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n“Kate was your mother.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\nI stood so quickly my chair scraped backward.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n“No.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n“Abby…”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n\n“No. You don’t get to just say that.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n
\n“I know.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n“Do you?”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\nI had spent my entire childhood not knowing where I’d come from.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\nI’d been placed with a family as a baby, but it didn’t last.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\nAfter that came foster homes. Some decent. Some not. None permanent.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\nBy adulthood, I had stopped imagining some beautiful reunion where a woman with my eyes appeared and explained everything.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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