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It was after they had been married for two years, watching Hen and Karen take in a handful of foster kids and adopt one themselves, that Bobby and Athena had decided to become foster parents.
It had taken them about six months with the training, interviews, and home visits for them to become fully certified. And after that, another three months to receive a call that there was a child they were looking to place with them.
On the phone call, they were only told it was a five year old boy, and the social worker would provide them with more details when she came to drop him off in the afternoon.
Bobby and Athena hadn’t really gone into this with any expectations for a certain child. They were open to either boy or girl, and as far as ages went, said they would prefer kids similar in age to May or Harry, but were open to any.
What they weren’t expecting however, was for a child barely in kindergarten to be placed with them.
When the social worker had called them on the phone and said the kid was five years old, they had an idea of what to expect, both of them having raised two kids through that age themselves. They hadn’t expected the kid to be… so small.
The social worker, a woman named Vanessa, wasn’t that tall to begin with, and the kid, Evan Buckley, barely came up to her hip.
“Sorry, sorry,” Vanessa, the social worker, said as she followed them inside to the kitchen, setting a large folder on the center table. Bobby could only guess that the folder contained information and documents about Evan, although he was surprised by just how large it was considering the kid was only five years old. “I know this is unexpected, but Evan’s case is, how can I say it, a bit unprecedented.”
Unprecedented was… an interesting word choice, Bobby thought.
And listening to Vanessa explain all of the details as Harry took Evan out in the backyard to show him the playset Bobby and Michael built two summers ago, Bobby would have to agree with her.
Special, interesting, unique, wouldn’t exactly do the situation justice.
It turned out that Evan, Evan Buckley, had been surrendered to the state when he was just eighteen months old at a hospital just outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Police and social services did find the kid’s parents pretty quickly afterwards, but after a couple hours of questioning, the state wasn’t able to do anything regarding them. Them leaving the boy at a hospital, below the age of two, had met the requirements for the safe haven drop off laws.
“If that all happened in Pennsylvania, how did he end up here?” Athena had asked.
Vanessa let out another long sigh as she leafed through a couple pages in the folder, pulling one out and sliding it across the table to Bobby and Athena. Bobby took a quick glance down at it, his eyes widened as he skimmed over the heading.
“Three months after he was dropped off at the hospital, he was officially adopted by the West’s,” Vanessa explained. “For his first three years living with them, it seemed as if things were going very well.”
“And I take it that something happened then?” Athena asked.
“Teachers at the school one the West’s older daughters went to began noticing things that just weren’t adding up. The parents were forgetting to sign forms sent home, lunch boxes coming to school empty, some bruises and cuts that were a bit too numerous to be explained by being a rambunctious kid. They submitted a report to DCFS who performed a home visit, thinking it would just be a wake up call for the parents and maybe some counseling and parenting classes for them, only to find numerous examples of severe neglect and abuse among the younger children, unsanitary living conditions, among other things.
“The children were immediately removed from their custody. The West’s biological children were placed with relatives, who didn’t want to take in Evan so he was placed into foster care. Then, no one there is exactly sure how this was all leaked to the local media, including all of the children's names and images. And as the Wests were notable people in the area, the husband on one of the local news channels and the wife a prominent charity organizer, it exploded in interest over there. DCFS thought it was best to place Evan with a foster family out of the East Coast-”
“Which is how he ended up here?” Athena finished.
“Yes,” Vanessa said. “The story was shared on most major news stations in Pennsylvania and the surrounding states. Due to the notoriety and his age, and that he had no family willing to take him in Pennsylvania, it was thought to be in his best interest to move him somewhere he would not be recognized. For the last week he has been living with a family as a temporary emergency placement, and we were hoping you would take him as a more permanent placement.”
Bobby and Athena shared a look with each other. But they didn’t need to share words to communicate what the other was thinking.
“We can take him in,” Bobby said.
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Bobby woke up the next morning and began with his usual routine on the days he was going or coming home from a shift - by cooking a large table of breakfast for everyone in the house.
Bobby turned around as he felt eyes on his back. At first he thought it was Athena. She occasionally liked to watch him cook in the morning. Although as he turned his head over his shoulder, he didn’t see her standing where she usually did as she watched him. Then he remembered that, even though she tended to be an early riser, certainly earlier than May and Harry, but she wasn’t standing there.
As Bobby turned his head back to look at the stove, something caught his attention from out of the corner of his eye. Bobby turned back around and inclined his head just so he could see right past the corner of the shelving unit he had been looking at. And there stood the boy who had moved in with them less than twenty four hours ago.
He was standing silently, pressed up against the end of the kitchen cabinet, staring at Bobby intently, watching him.
Bobby merely smiled at him as he turned back around. He then reached into one of the upper cabinets by his shoulder to grab a couple plates and set them down next to the stove. As he moved the scrambled eggs to one of them, he spoke to Evan.
“Good morning, Evan. How about you come and take a seat at the table,” Bobby greeted the boy and he motioned to the kitchen table to his right.
The boy let out a barely audible squeak, telling Bobby that he heard him. A couple seconds later, Bobby heard the soft patter of little footsteps across the kitchen floor, followed by the sounds of one of the wooden chairs moving along the floor and someone climbing onto it.
“So,” Bobby started, hoping that an easy question would help break the ice between them. “Do you have a favorite breakfast food?”
Evan merely stared at him with wide eyes, probably not expecting to be asked a question. After a couple moments of silence, in which Bobby returned to moving the scrambled eggs he had made into a bowl, he finally spoke up with a quiet, “I like pancakes.”
Bobby smiled. “Yeah?” he asked. “Well then… maybe we can make pancakes tomorrow. How does some eggs, bacon, and toast sound?”
“That sounds okay,” Evan said, not sounding entirely convinced.
Bobby made two small plates with a portion each of the eggs, bacon, and toast, setting one down in front of Evan before taking a seat across from him.
Before reaching for the fork, Bobby watched Evan’s eyes shift around the room. “What about the others?” he asked.
“They usually all sleep in on the weekends,” Bobby said. “They’ll be down soon though, don’t worry.”
“Will- Will there still be food for them?” Evan asked, his voice small, sounding somewhat worried.
Oh, Bobby thought. “Don’t worry,” he was quick to reassure the boy. “Even if we run out of food on the table, there’s more than enough to cook some more in the kitchen.”
Evan still didn’t look entirely convinced, but he did start to nibble at a piece of bacon, so Bobby thought it was good enough for now.
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Three weeks after Evan had come to stay with them, they had all gone to watch one of the basketball games Harry was playing in with his school’s basketball team.
Evan had taken hold of May’s hand, following behind her as they walked to find seats in the slowly crowding bleachers. Bobby and Athena took seats directly behind them.
“What number does Harry have?” Evan turned to May and asked her.
“He’s number five,” May answered him.
“Five,” Buck repeated, nodding his head.
“Do you know what a five looks like?” May then asked him.
“Of course I do,” Evan said. What was up with people in California always asking if he knew his numbers and letters?
Harry’s team had ended up winning 36 to 28, with Harry scoring eight of the points for his team.
As Harry met them in the school lobby after the game, after changing in the locker room, Evan ran up wrapped around the boy in a hug. “Harry, you won!” he exclaimed.
“Yeah, we did,” Harry said as he wrapped his arms back around Buck and lofted him off the ground as he walked the rest of the way back to his family.
“Can I join a basketball team?” Evan had come up to Bobby and asked a week later.
The question had thrown Bobby completely off guard. It wasn’t often that the boy asked for something. In fact, Bobby could count on one hand the amount of times Evan asked for something, something Bobby had been trying to work on with the boy. So far Evan had only been asking for relatively small things though, an afternoon snack, a glass of juice at breakfast, reminding Bobby that he said he would make pancakes for breakfast.
Asking for something like joining a basketball team? Completely unprompted? “Um… sure!” Bobby said, without really thinking through what Evan had asked. He couldn’t figure out the specifics of it all later.
The specifics of it all were both complicated and not at the same time.
The next season of the rec league started two weeks later, and although Evan was a late addition, the organizers were more than happy to add him to a roster.
With the way Evan’s eyes were lit up as he ran up to Bobby at the end of the first practice, Bobby knew that the boy would be talking non stop on the drive back home.
“Did you see there’s three Evans on the team?” Evan asked as he walked over to Bobby at the end of practice.
“I think I heard you all talking about that,” Bobby said.
“So we made nicknames for each other,” Evan continued.
Bobby laughed as he asked, “And what nickname did they come up with for you?”
“Buck.”
Bobby lifted an eyebrow, not expecting that. “Where did they get Buck from?”
“My middle name is Buckley,” Evan said. “They- what’s it called, they shortened it.”
As he explained it, Bobby froze for a split, barely perceptible second. He had read over the paperwork the social worker had given him when first dropping Evan off at their house. Buckley had been the name of Evan’s first, biological parents. Somehow after he was adopted by the Wests, it had become his middle name.
“Buck huh?” Bobby asked. “How do you like that name?”
“I love it!” he exclaimed.
It occurred to Bobby then that his history of how he had come to live with the Wests and then Bobby and Athena was probably never exactly explained to Evan, but he knew now was not the best time to do so.
“So then,” Bobby asked. “Is that a nickname you just want the basketball team to call you? Or everyone?”
Buck thought about it for a couple seconds. “Everyone,” he said.
And that was how Evan became Buck.
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Four months after Evan arrived, their social worker contacted them again to inform them that the Wests’ parental rights over Evan Buckley had been officially taken away, and that he was eligible for adoption.
As Athena and Bobby were the current foster parents of him, and by all accounts, had formed a very positive and supportive relationship with him, they were the first to be offered the chance to formally adopt him.
If they were honest with themselves, Bobby and Athena hadn’t become foster parents with the specific intention of adopting any child. They had said that if the opportunity came, they would talk about it.
They hadn’t expected the opportunity to come with the first child placed with them.
They honestly hadn’t even planned on it.
But now that Buck had spent the past four months with them, woven himself into their lives pretty firmly and securely, they couldn’t see a future without him in their lives.
But of course, they would need to talk it over with Buck and explain everything, and get the boy’s answer themselves.
“You’d be my parents?” Buck asked, confusion painting his face.
“Yes,” Bobby said.
“Like the Wests?” Buck asked.
Bobby held himself back from giving a straight ‘yes.’ He had read reports of what took place in the Wests’ house, and none of it was necessarily good, but Buck himself had never said anything about it.
“Sort of,” Bobby said, Buck’s eyes furrowed at that.
“I don’t want this to be like the Wests’ place,” Buck said.
“Wait,” Bobby said, quick to reassure the boy. “Nothing about us will change, but…” Bobby racked his mind for the words. He had thought he had thought of a way to effectively explain this to the boy, apparently not. “Adoption means…”
Athena then butted in. “Adoption means that you will live with us until you’re all grown up,” she said. “It means that the social workers like Ms. Vanessa won’t move you to a different foster family.”
That only served to confuse Buck even more. “But the Wests adopted me,” he said. “But I was still moved to a different foster home, all the way over here.”
Bobby had a feeling Buck might say something like this in this explanation.
“Well,” Athena started slowly. “Sometimes when parents are mean and hurt their kids, it doesn’t matter whether the kids had been adopted by them in the past… Sometimes it’s best for the kids to not live with them anymore and be adopted by other people.”
“And you…” Buck asked, his voice small. “... You’ll never hurt me like they did?”
Bobby was taken aback by that question. First by the emotion behind it, then by the fact he realized this was the first time Buck even remotely talked about actually being hurt by those people.
“No,” Bobby said. “We promise we’ll never hurt you.”
Buck hummed at that explanation, and nodded his head slightly. From the look on Buck’s face, Bobby could tell the young boy understood what they were saying, but probably didn’t know how he wanted to respond and go forward.
“You don’t have to decide right now,” Bobby said. “You can take a little while to think about this, and if you have any other questions, you can ask us.”
And then in a surprise to both of them, Buck nearly jumped out of his chair. “No, I don’t need to think about it!” he loudly.
Bobby and Athena quickly shared a look, then looked back at him. “I want… I want you to adopt me,” he said.
“Are you sure?” Bobby asked. “Like I said, you can take some time to think about it.”
Buck only nodded his head vigorously. “Yes, I’m absolutely, a thousand times sure.”
Bobby and Athena both smiled then. “Well, then,” Bobby said. “I guess we need to start a lot of paperwork.”