The nurse unfolded the document in her hand and explained that after I had signed the papers, Daniel had asked the social worker not to process anything until he had signed too. Then, while I was saying goodbye to Sophie, he had quietly asked whether we could still change our minds if one of us refused to complete the final paperwork.
I turned toward him.
“You knew we could still stop this?”
Daniel’s eyes immediately filled with tears.
“I didn’t know what I wanted anymore.”
I felt anger rise through all the grief that had been sitting inside me.
“You spent weeks convincing me that giving her up was the right thing to do.”
“I know.”
“You watched me sign.”
“I know, Emily.”
“Then why would you ask them to wait?”
Daniel wiped his face with both hands before answering.
“Because when they took her away from you, she started crying.”
His voice broke.
“She kept looking toward the door you had walked through, and I couldn’t stand it. I asked the nurse if I could hold her one last time.”
The nurse quietly added that Sophie had stopped crying almost immediately after Daniel picked her up.
Daniel looked at me then, and I saw the same man who had once carried our daughter through the hallway at two in the morning, thanking her for every cry because we had waited eleven years to hear them.
