Every time I start to speak, we cry. Every time she starts to speak, we cry. We can’t even talk and it’s been five minutes since we finished the email.
We keep waiting for the attachments to load on my phone, but they’re taking forever, so Six grabs her laptop. I log in to my email and hit download.
When the first picture loads, there isn’t even enough air in the room to fill our collective gasps.
He looks just like me.
But he also looks just like her.
It’s so weird and amazing, seeing this life we created and it somehow makes me feel even closer to her.
“Oh my God,” she whispers. “He’s perfect.”
“Scroll down,” I say, too impatient to wait for more of him now that we got this small glimpse of him. We open up every picture. We zoom in on his features. He has Six’s mouth and my eyes and a headful of brown hair.
We even zoom in on his surroundings. It looks like he has a big backyard. A whole playset he’s still too little to use. There are five pictures total, and after we look at them each twenty times, I say, “We should call them.”
Six nods. “Yes.” She clenches her stomach. “I’m so nervous.”
“Me too. Me too, babe.”
She sits on the edge of her bed and I stand and pace while I dial the number Quinn listed in the email. I put it on speaker and when it starts ringing, I sit down next to Six.
“This is Graham.”
“Hi. Hey, it’s me. Daniel. We just got your wife’s email.” I feel like I should say more. Like thank you or we love you or can we come meet him tonight?
“Great,” Graham says. “Let me grab Quinn.”
The line goes quiet and Six and I look at each other nervously. Then a woman says, “Hi. This is Quinn. Is this Six and Daniel?”
“Yes,” we both say at once. “Thank you,” Six blurts out. She’s crying, but also smiling bigger than I’ve ever seen her smile. “Thank you so much. He’s so perfect. We’re so happy to see him so happy. Thank you.” She covers her own mouth so she’ll stop talking.
Quinn laughs. “Thank you,” she says softly. “I meant every word.”
“Where do you guys live?” I ask. “Are you still in Italy?”
“Oh. No, I forgot to mention that in the email. We moved back to Connecticut a few months ago. We wanted to be closer to Graham’s parents.”
“So Matteo is here? In the same country?”
“Yep.”
Six wipes at her eyes. “And you really don’t mind if we meet him?”
“We would love that. But we know very little about either of you. Could you tell us a little about yourselves first? Where do you live?”
“We both go to college in Dallas,” I say. “Six wants to be a psychologist.”
“Psychiatrist,” Six corrects between tears.
“Something that ends in ist,” I say. “I don’t know what I want to be yet. We’re both freshmen, so we’re figuring things out as we go.”
“And you’re a couple? Still?”
“Yes. Well, we weren’t technically a couple until after the baby was adopted. But we are now.”
“I love that,” Quinn says.
“Daniel is the best,” Six says. “You’ll love him.” She looks at me and smiles. I squeeze her hand.
“You’ll love Six more.”
“I already love you both because of what you’ve given us,” Quinn says. “Well, we know you guys are dying to meet him, but we don’t want you to miss too much college. We would say come next weekend, but we’d like you to be able to stay more than just a day or two. How does Christmas break sound? It’s just a few weeks away.”
That sounds like a lifetime.
I can see Six feels the same way because she deflates a little. But then she says, “That’s perfect. We’ll be there.”
“Yes. We’ll be there.”
Quinn says, “Do you need help with the cost of flights?”
“No, you guys have done enough,” Six says. “Truly.”
There’s a pause, and then Graham takes over the phone. “You have our number now. We’ll text you our address. Just let us know what days you want to come and we’ll work our schedules around it. We’re looking forward to it.”
“Thank you,” Six says again.
“Yes. Thank you.”
Six is squeezing my hand so hard, it kind of hurts. Graham and Quinn both tell us goodbye. When I hang up the phone, we sit in silence for a moment, letting it all sink in.