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Chapter 15

As Sophie Bouchard had predicted, the adoption went through without a hitch, even though the police eventually figured out where little Evan had crossed the Canadian border.

They figured out who his birth family was and provided the Hollanders with all the information they managed to dig up, though they told them that Evan’s birth parents had been contacted and had resigned their parental rights.

“I still can’t believe they gave up their youngest child because his forced donations couldn’t save the middle one,” Yuna muttered under her breath, cursing Evan’s family, but at the same time thanking them that they didn’t even attempt to take him back.

“Me neither,” David said. “But I am grateful that they gave him up without too much of a fuss. He’s part of our family now and he doesn’t need these hateful people.”

“I seriously doubt he will remember them. We will help him forget all their bad deeds,” Yuna assured him.

“We have him in therapy already and he’s working hard on being just a happy little boy,” David reminded her.

“That’s true,” Yuna agreed.

—-

“Mummy?” Shane called out softly. They were still in the courthouse, so he knew he needed to behave around all the adults milling around, but his parents had promised to take him and Evan out to the ice rink, something they had been planning for a while, but then both boys had caught a cold.

Yuna, who was talking to their lawyer, stopped and turned toward her son.

“Yes, Shane?” she asked softly.

“Are we done yet? You said we had to talk to the judgy person and then we could go …,” he said, putting his hands on his hips the way his mom often did. “Well, we talked to the judgy person, but we are still here.”

He talked as if he were filing a complaint, and he saw his mother fighting to stop herself from smiling.

Yuna kneeled in front of her son and cupped his cheek.

“There are a couple more steps we need to follow before we are done,” she admitted. “But it shouldn’t take much longer.”

Shane pouted.

“You promised it wouldn’t take long earlier already,” he complained.

Their lawyer chuckled softly.

“They are calling us in again, so we can get things handled quickly. It should just be a bit more paperwork to sign,” he said.

Shane stayed by his father’s side, who had Evan sitting on his hip like usual. Shane held onto his father’s hand and watched his mother sign a lot of paper with many words and no pictures.

Then she came and took Evan from his father.

David let go of Shane’s hand and ran his fingers through his black hair, and a moment later he stood at the same table where his mother had been standing a minute before.

He also signed everywhere the judgy person, and the lawyer pointed, and then they were offering congratulations, and Mommy was kissing the top of Evan’s head before kneeling in front of Shane.

“It’s official now, Shane,” Yuna said. “Evan will be staying with us forever.”

Shane clung to Evan, whom he had taken to calling his little bother.

“My little bother now, forever,” he muttered softly and kissed the top of Evan’s head even though it meant he needed to stand on his tiptoes because Evan was nearly the same height as him.

Evan clung to him, calling him ‘big bother’ in return because that was what little brothers do while being a little shit at the same time.

David snorted out loud and made his way to his wife. He hugged and kissed her before they finally made their way out of the courthouse to go celebrate the adoption of their youngest son in the way the children had picked, namely doing the Canadian thing—yes, picking stereotypes here—and heading to an ice rink to skate.

The boys had been out on the lake near their home before, so they knew what to expect, but neither of them had ever worn formal gear the way they expected them to do at an ice rink.

Yuna and David wrestled them into padding, and ice skates, putting tiny helmets on their heads before helping both boys to take their first ‘formal’ steps on the ice.

The whole day was spent with everyone laughing as they fell over on the ice, spreadeagle for a moment before tucking in their limbs for safety reasons.

“Mum,” Shane muttered tiredly against his mother’s shoulder at the end of the day, when she forcefully carried him off the ice with David doing the same for Evan. “I wanna do this every day … I love the ice.”

Yuna pressed a gentle kiss against her son’s temple.

“We will see, my love,” she murmured. “For now, let’s go home and have dinner. Your brother deserves a bit more celebration … and you do to.”

Evan perked up in David’s arms and peered at his mum.

“Can we have nuggies?” he asked before yawning and collapsing back against David’s shoulder.

Yuna smiled softly.

“Yes, we can have chicken nuggets,” she said.

“Dino!” Shane shouted.

Evan pointed at Shane and nodded.

“Dino!” he confirmed.

Neither parent protested nor told them that dino nuggets were made from chicken.

“Of course, we will be having dino nuggets and some fries,” she agreed instead, even knowing that she would need to make a quick stop at the grocery store to get a fucking bag of dino nuggets just to make the children happy.

It was going to be worth the hassle to see her two boys smiling, even if she and David preferred different kinds of food. This was the nature of parenthood.

You did what was best for your children without even thinking about what would be best for you, until the children were old enough to take care of themselves, and even then, you didn’t stop, because being a parent is a commitment for life. The way the commitment is expressed just changed how it looks.

Chapter 16

Shane and Evan started school in the same year, and they insisted on being in the same class. A lot of people were confused why those two boys were attached at the hip and called themselves brothers when it was clear that they didn’t share a parent in any form.

A lot of teachers tried to tell them that they weren’t brothers even on their first day, until Evan stood on his table so he could look his teacher in the eyes properly and said loudly, so everyone in the room could hear, “You is idiot! Can be family without sharing blood! I is Shane’s ‘dopted bother!”

Shane himself was tugging on Evan’s pant leg, attempting to get him down from the table while the teacher stared at the five-year-old with an open mouth.

“Mummy said not to be a smartass, ‘van!” the six-year-old insisted.

The teacher opened her mouth and started to lecture Evan about being respectful of adults, especially his teachers, when Shane, who was just lecturing his brother, turned around, marched around the table Evan was still standing on, and kicked the teacher in the shin.

“Only Mum and Dad get to lecture us, Miss Smartypants!” he said firmly, causing Evan to laugh so hard he toppled off the table, landing with a dull thud and a crack.

Shane immediately stopped what he was doing, kneeling by his brother’s side.

“Don’t move. Mr. Tremblay always said not to move if we take a really hard fall and to let an adult look first,” he told him calmly, pressing a hand to the middle of Evan’s chest to hold him in place.

The teacher was frozen in place, staring at the little boy who had fallen from the table.

“Miss Smartypants,” Shane shouted. “You are the fucking teacher!”

He knew he shouldn’t curse, but both he and Evan were playing ice hockey in a pee-wee league and already cursing like tiny sailors when no one was looking, and in some cases even when they were.

His cursing attracted the attention of someone out in the hallway, though, so it served its purpose at least, as an adult entered the room, took one look at the scene in front of them and left the room at a dead run to call 9-1-1, given that the child was clearly hurt.

When the paramedics arrived, the teacher was already trying to separate the brothers. Shane bit her on the hand before shouting that he needed to stay with his little bother or his parents would get mad.

Evan was silently crying. It was one thing he still couldn’t help. When he was hurt, he cried silently, because anything else meant punishment.

Without hesitation, the paramedics waded in, and one of them took care of Shane.

“I need you to let go of your brother for a moment, young man. I promise you, you can stay with him while we take him to the hospital and the doctors will only separate you when it is really necessary, but you can stay close to him,” the young woman said gently.

“Can I hold his hand?” Shane asked softly, straining a bit against her hand on his shoulder.

Evan was reaching for his brother.

“Shane, big bother, please,” the younger boy pleaded.

The paramedic holding Shane back nodded.

“You can hold his hand the moment we got an IV in, but you need to be very careful not to move it,” she explained, while her colleague started Evan’s treatment.

Evan’s arm was put in a card-box-brace and strapped to his chest. He whined softly, clearly in pain, and once the IV was in his hand, Shane finally was allowed to hold his brother’s hand again.

“Hurts,” Evan muttered under his breath, clinging to Shane’s hands.

Shane ran his hand through Evan’s hair soothingly.

“I know. I’m sorry,” he apologized.

The teacher was still confused about how the boys were connected. Not understanding what was going on.

The paramedics carried the two boys out on a gurney, leaving a classroom in absolute disarray behind with a teacher unable to restore order, not that it was their problem.

They took the boys to the emergency room.

Shane was allowed to stay with Evan the whole time, outside of when they took the X-rays of Evan’s arm. He eventually sat behind Evan and wrapped his arms around his younger brother.

He talked softly to him about all the things Mom and Dad would likely allow him to do while hurt. He was in the middle of talking about maybe asking them to get a dog, when the door to their room opened and the nurse with them alerted them to the fact that their parents were here.

“Mum!” Shane exclaimed, making no move to abandon his brother.

Evan, who was quite sleepy from the pain medication he’d been given, looked at them.

“Mummy,” he whispered. “Daddy!”

David and Yuna settled on the left and right of the mattress respectively, and cupped Evan’s cheeks.

“We are here, Darling,” Yuna said gently, while David looked at their oldest and asked him what happened.

“De teacher said we’re no brothers,” Evan muttered. “Told her she’s a dummy.”

David closed his eyes when Shane gave him a more detailed explanation that didn’t exactly paint a pretty picture of his children’s first day at school. They had known adopting a child wouldn’t always make things easy, but this was absolutely ridiculous.

It hadn’t even been a full day, and one of their children got hurt telling a teacher to mind their own business and not remark on their family life.

That a five-year-old even had to tell an adult something like this was beyond the pale.

They talked to their children for a while before the doctor came by to have a conversation with them.

“It’s a clean break,” the doctor told them. “Six weeks in a cast and about a month of rehabilitation and your son will be as good as new.”

The Hollanders weren’t exactly happy about their children’s school life starting with a broken bone, but there was nothing they could do.

Once the doctor had given them all the information they needed, they took their boys home and tried to figure out how to handle their next steps.