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Chapter 14 [outtake]

not edited.

The Past, The Other Side, The Disappointments (Donavan POV)

Taking my wife's hand, Margo in the back seat the silence in the car spoke wonders, while I replayed the afternoon on loop in my mind, analyzing everything little detail. The way Etta and Reese were attentive to the children, the easy way that Sawyer and Tristan fell in love with their siblings. Siblings that Katherine and I could never give them, siblings that we didn't know of, siblings that made Sawyer and Tristan easily find a place in their family unit. I had expected it to be a strain on Sawyer and Tristan, expected that it would take much longer than a day for them to bond with Etta and Reese. For them to hold in their hearts some sort of grudge or fear the situation we were in, but they hadn't. Inside I knew that my children loved me, loved us all.

I had to wonder, question if this was happening because they children could sense that Etta and Reese were their biological parents, because Sawyer and Tristan warmed up to Etta amazingly. Sawyer had so many of Etta's mannerisms, so many little things we believed — I thought she picked up from Katherine — all laid at the table, matching Etta. My heart clenched painfully and the air was sucked out of my lungs, as spikes of pricks traveled down my back when Reese went along with the smell Sawyer gave. It was an odd behavior, one we had — lately — been trying to get her to stop, she began sniffing everything and while Tristan did it as well, once we — Katherine and I — had put our foot down, he stopped.

Right in front of us, she told them one child smelt of Honey, remembering that she wasn't allowed to just go sniffing people, she stopped, but Reese, continued her thought easily, 'and Ree smells like vanilla.' It was peculiar, going around saying that people had certain scents, even when they weren't wearing any lotion and clearly there was no way to have the types of scents that Sawyer and Tristan would name. But right in front of us, at that very moment, something I had scolded Sawyer for, her biological father praised and agreed with her. The joy that erupted on Sawyers face when he did so, my stomach sank.

 The three of us drove to our home where my mother, my siblings — Gemma and Clay — their families as well as Katherine's parents were waiting for us... pulling up, when I finally placed the car in park, and Margo left, Katherine and I still stuck, unable to move, I realized I hadn't, the news that I wanted to give them wasn't what had happened.

I wouldn't be able to tell them that Katherine and I had to soothe and push them to interact with Etta and Reese. I wouldn't tell them that we saw a look of pity on the social workers face when all attempts to bond with our children failed for Etta and Reese. I wouldn't tell them that Etta and Reese saw the pain of separating our children from the only parents they knew. None of that would be said, because none of it was true. We couldn't claim that they wouldn't make good parents, because unbeknownst to us they were already parents. "We should go inside," Katherine said monotone releasing my hand and exiting the car.

Everyone sitting around our living room waiting, my mother and Katherine's preparing lunch for all of us while in our small backyard my siblings children played. Everything oddly normal except two people who owned my heart weren't here, Sawyer and Tristan were missing... "How was it?" Clay asked when Katherine avoids the living room going straight upstairs to gather her self. My hung low, "They have other children," I muttered and my mother and siblings mouths dropped, some giving an audible response. "Completely blind sided us, but we show up to their place and they have two older children maybe two years younger that Sawyer and Tristan, as well as two identical twin girls, the spitting image of Sawyer and Etta," whatever my mother was cooking gets abandoned as her eyes flare angrily.

We hadn't give anyone but Margo information on what happened, how we ended up with those two children.

"So they had more kids and now decided to what, come back and claim them as though you were only watching them until the time was right?" Gemma and Clay nodding their heads in agreement...