A Missing Heart(89)

“Yes,” I tell her. “I responded to her right away and told her all about you and how you had taken to Gavin as if he were your own, selflessly offering him a motherly figure in his life, while loving him like he should be loved. I told her how you and I together gave him a family—an older sister and a little brother.”

Her forehead crumples and her lips quiver. “You said all of that?”

“It’s the truth, Cam. Yesterday, I got this in the mail.” I hold up the other piece of paper.

Cammy snatches it from my hand. “Adoption papers?”

“If you’ll have him,” I say.

“Where do I sign? What do I have to do to make this official? I’ll do it this very second!” Her words come out so quickly and without thought. I know she would jump in front of a moving car for Gavin, and she’s spent three years proving that to me. “I will be that little boy’s mother. I love him as if I put him on this earth myself, and I will continue to give him everything I can. I would have continued even if it were never an option to make it official. I love him.”

“I know all of this, Cam. I never questioned it for a second.”

“Thank you for this opportunity,” she cries softly.

“Some things were never meant to be, but then there are things that were always meant to be.”

My life has come full circle in the most dizzying, off-roading way, and while I have spent half of my life being impatient for this moment to occur, it was all worth fighting through. It was all worth surviving. It was all worth waiting for.