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They get the call at 2:24pm on a Monday.
Shane is propped up in bed with his glasses low on his nose and “What To Expect When You’re Adopting” open in his lap. The hard cover of the book digs at a particularly grueling bruise that’s been blooming on his thigh for almost two weeks, his skin turning from black to purple to yellow ever since one of Florida’s defencemen collided with him in the Cup final. He absently thumbs at it as his eyes track down the page.
The pain simmers, aches, seeps deeper into something almost soothing. Familiar. His body is often just one large bruise these days, waiting to heal.
He rereads the sentence he’s on.
Shane has become so very tired of waiting. For the pain to recede, for the bruises to heal, for his life to feel like his own. He feels, sometimes, that he’s unknowingly spent his whole life waiting for his life and mind and heart to all catch up to one another. He can never seem to figure out which one is winning, which is falling behind, which needs his focus. Ilya and his dad remind him that he doesn’t need to be all in control, all the time, and yet he feels like he can never quite keep everything running at the same pace.
This too, the adoption. That has been the worst wait of all.
He closes his book with a huff, staring blankly at the colourful yellow cover. He’s already read the whole thing front-to-back four times.
Logically, Shane knows he has endured worse waits than this. Fuck, he waited nine years for Ilya. Longer, if he doesn’t start counting until after they could openly walk down their street together without Shane feeling like he was going to break out in hives. He knows they started this journey early for a reason. He knows, deep in his heart, that Ilya is meant to be a dad. He knows this is perhaps the most he has ever wanted anything, even more than hockey, even more than Ilya, because what could be better than building a family with the man he loves?
He knows. He knows. He knows.
And yet this waiting might undo him.
It’s been nine months since they submitted the application. Shane had been sitting at the dining table, Ilya hovering behind him with both hands gripping Shane’s shoulders, as he’d pressed submit. Shane had stayed planted at the table for hours refreshing his email and checking his phone, as if the universe would magically summon up their future and deliver it to them that same afternoon.
Ilya had insisted they make a mad dash to the store to get supplies, just in case, and had all but dragged Shane away from his laptop to the car. That night, Shane had called his mum and cried silently against the kitchen counter while Ilya showered even though they’d both agreed to tell his parents later that week. The next night, David had turned up with ingredients for katsu curry and abandoned them in the entryway to crush both Ilya and Shane against his chest while Yuna watched, teary eyed. He and Ilya had explained the whole thing over dinner, and the anticipation had been so thick in the air Shane had almost been able to taste it alongside the pickled ginger and kewpie mayo from his plate.
It’s been nine months since they submitted the application.
They’ve done all the paperwork and checks. They’ve done all the courses and assessments.
They’ve also both played a whole season of hockey, fought through the playoffs, and hoisted their third Stanley Cup with Ottawa as not just teammates, but husbands. Shane is bruised on what feels like half his body and Ilya has been limping around the house all week from his ruined knee. The media has finally, barely, left them alone for five minutes, headlines of dynasties and history-in-the-making following hot on their heels ever since the final buzzer two weeks ago.
It’s not that Shane’s not proud. Of course he fucking is. Even as a peewee, with dreams in the stratosphere, he could never have envisioned this. Even at Montreal, with his name built into the foundations and rafters as it was, he could never have envisioned this. Playing with Ilya, winning cups with Ilya, loving Ilya for the whole world to see.
Still. He has one more thing on his list that he wants, more than anything, to check off with a big red tick.
It’s been nine months since they submitted the application.
It’s been a long fucking nine months.
“You are thinking loudly again, moya lyubov.”
Shane looks to Ilya where he’s padding from the bathroom, towel hung low on his waist. The cut through his eyebrow has faded to a thin red line, angry from the shower Shane knows Ilya ran close-to-boiling, and his chest is also not free from nearly-faded bruises. His curls hang water logged across his forehead. His necklace gleams gold, as does the ring on his finger.
As always, Shane’s head quiets at the sight of his husband. His Ilya.
“You’re dripping water onto the floor.”
Ilya continues to their closet anyway. “Do not change the subject, Shane.”
“I’m not.”
By the time Ilya has thrown on sweats and his favourite threadbare blue tank, Shane has sunk further down into their bed, book now properly abandoned to the nightstand. He stares at a speck on their ceiling. Then, mentally reminds himself to grab the spare can of paint to patch it with when he’s next in the garage.
Ilya flops down on the bed beside him, ginger with his knee as he has been since they left the Cup afterparty at Bood’s. He reaches out a hand to flick gently at the freckles along Shane’s nose. “Your thoughts are so loud I could hear them all the way from the shower.”
Shane frowns at him. “You can’t hear thoughts, Ilya.”
That earns him a soft little sigh of a laugh. “You are worrying about the adoption again, yes?”
He forces his eyes back to the ceiling, to that frustrating speck. It’s been such a boon being with Ilya, who Shane rarely feels like he has to explain himself to. For the longest time, maybe since the first time, it’s always felt that Ilya knew Shane’s wants and needs better than he did himself. It still makes him feel flayed raw sometimes.
“Moya lyubov,” Ilya sighs, his hand moving to rub absentmindedly along Shane’s cheek where it’s framed by his glasses. “It will happen eventually, I’m sure of it.”
“It’s been nine months, Ilya.”
“Babies take nine months to grow. Maybe nature is simply making us wait.”
Shane just stares at Ilya. At the calm set to his brow and the warmth of their lamp reflected in his eyes. “You really aren’t worried?”
Ilya smiles softly at him. “I have worried about a lot in my life, but not this. Never this. We have earned this, Shane. We will get our turn.”
The sigh heaves out of him. Ilya is right, as he usually, annoyingly, is.
Maybe it was seeing Milo at Bood’s the night of the Cup win, dressed in a miniature Centaurs jersey and running around with an inflatable finger taller than he was. Maybe it was Amber and Arthur screaming in the background of his Facetime with Hayden two days ago. Maybe it was simply that he was sick of the universe making him wait for what he wanted, like he had been forced to wait for what feels like everything else.
His phone starts ringing from the nightstand.
It’s a Monday afternoon two weeks after the Stanley Cup final. He already spoke to his mum this morning. The Pikes are on vacation somewhere sunny and tropical. The Centaurs are all either recovering at home or as far from a hockey rink as they can get before pre-season starts in a few months. Rose is on shoot somewhere in Iceland. Svetlana is locked away at a business conference in Manhattan.
His phone is still ringing.
Shane simply stares at it
At the name flashing on the screen.
Ilya is staring at Shane. “Are you going to answer it?”
“Yeah, yes, fuck,” he mutters, nervous system suddenly jump-starting as he lunges for his phone. “Hello?”
“Shane, it’s Laura! How are you? Still celebrating that Cup win, I’m sure.”
He isn’t sure he’s breathing. “Hi Laura,” he says, and Ilya is suddenly bolt upright beside him. “Y-yeah, we’re stoked about the Cup.”
“Good, good. Is Ilya there?”
“Yes I’m here,” Ilya is saying where he has already disentangled the phone from Shane’s hand where it had frozen at his ear. They put it on speaker between them.
“Great! Is now a good time to talk to you both? We’ve had an update in your application that I’d like to talk through with you.”
“Now’s perfect,” Shane says instantly, eyes flickering between the phone and the far wall and Ilya. Ilya is staring right at him, eyes impossibly wide in the dim afternoon light of their bedroom. “What kind of update are we talking? Good? Bad?”
Laura laughs softly. Shane feels like screaming hurry up at the top of his lungs, but bodily forces calm to spread through himself. “We had a case come through this morning. I’ll of course send over the full file for you to look over but the long and short of it is we have a birth mother, and we have a baby. She was born last night just outside Toronto and consents are already finalised.”
“She?” Ilya chokes out.
“Yes, a little girl. I can send over everything now for you to review, and if you’re comfortable and we sign, we can then pass this onto the birth mother and go from there. Sounds good?”
“Send them now,” Shane snaps, before remembering himself. “Please. Please send them straight away. Sorry.”
“Of course. I’ll send them right now. Remember that this doesn’t necessarily mean you’re locked in, so I want you to temper your expectations until we get the final seal of approval, okay?”
Shane thinks he might’ve stopped breathing. Or his heart might’ve stopped. Or both. Ilya doesn’t look much better as he says, “thank you so much, Laura.”
“You’re welcome, dear. I’m going to hang up now so I can send it over, okay? Call me back once you’ve had a good look at everything and we can go through the details and answer any of your questions.”
Shane finds his voice somewhere in the back of his throat. “Thank you. We will.”
The call ends.
They both stare at each other.
Five seconds. Ten.
“Oh my god,” Shane whispers.
Twin tears streak down Ilya’s cheeks as he suddenly blinks for the first time since the call ended. “Yes.”
“A little girl, Ilya.”
Ilya reaches out to clutch at Shane’s face tight enough that he can feel Ilya’s pulse in his jaw. “Yes.”
“Oh my god.”
Ilya’s eyes are flicking so quickly between Shane’s that he can barely keep up. Another tear slips down his cheek, catching on his mole.
“I need my laptop.” That breaks him from his daze, and Shane is hauling himself from the bed and running from the room towards his study.
The world seems suddenly so sharp and small, reduced to nothing but the cool wood floors beneath his feet and Anya’s shocked little bark from the hallway and the glint of his laptop where it rests on his desk. His phone buzzes in his hand as he barrels through the doorway, the Outlook notification burning blue on his lockscreen.
Shane has run from a lot of things in his life. This feels like the first time he’s been glad to run towards something.
Back in their bedroom, Ilya stays sitting in the middle of their king sized bed, a beam of sunlight catching him where it has slipped between their curtains, and he cries.
*
They look over everything for almost an hour.
They’re on the phone with Laura for another two after that.
Neither of them has the heart to move the discussion to the dining table like it probably warrants, so they both huddle together in their bed with a laptop open in Shane’s lap and Ilya’s phone on speaker in his. It’s information overload in the way Shane has always relished, his mind connecting dots and pulling from the pile of books sitting on his nightstand and asking questions whenever things snags. Laura indulges him with all of it, like she has since their first phone call a few weeks after they submitted their initial application.
Ilya is quieter, calmer maybe, but Shane knows better. Ilya’s hand hasn’t strayed from Shane’s knee the entire time they’ve been sitting next to each other. Occasionally, a stray tear slips down his cheek. Shane reaches up to wipe it away every time.
“If you’re ready,” Laura is saying, “I can send your profile over. Like I said before, we can’t proceed until that final seal is approved by the birth mother, and it might take a few days. We don’t want to rush anything of course.”
Shane nods as if Laura’s sitting across from him. “Of course. How soon can you get it over to them?”
“As soon as those files of yours hit my inbox.”
He looks at Ilya. His hazel eyes are shining again. Shane grabs the hand clutching at his knee and drags it over to his laptop. “Together?”
Ilya sucks in a breath deep enough that his whole chest heaves up with it. Nods. Another tear slips free, but he’s smiling. “Together.”
They hit send.
*
Neither of them sleeps that night.
It was almost 6pm when they finally managed to send everything over the night before, and Laura warned them of the potential wait, but still. It’s around 1am when Ilya rolls over from where he’s been pretending to sleep and rests his head on Shane’s chest.
“Come sit at the dock with me?”
Shane goes to the dock with him.
He’s so glad to be at the cottage for this. The routine feels familiar now, after so many years. The season ends, the skates get tucked away, and they disappear into the woods and lakes for as long as the universe will let them. Shane almost can’t believe part of him was once so terrified to share this place with anyone, let alone Ilya Rozanov. It had scared him so much that first summer.
Now, he can’t exist in the cottage without being surrounded by Ilya. Every wall, every piece of furniture, the photos framed on the mantle, the extra pair of shoes by the entry, even the fucking well and the remote for the blinds in the master bedroom. All of it is Ilya. All of it is them. Sure, it’s the same at their house back in Ottawa, but the cottage will always be the first place they allowed themselves to love each other openly, freely, without fear. Just the two of them.
Hopefully, soon the three of them.
And fuck, but does that thought alone make Shane almost squirm out of his own skin with excitement and anxiety and love.
They walk hand in hand across the garden path, down the stone stairs and to the dock at the end. Ilya dangles his legs off the edge. Shane tucks his head into the crook of Ilya’s shoulder as if the spot was carved out just for him.
The lake is always so beautiful at night.
“You think we will be good?” Ilya asks eventually, voice pressed into Shane’s hair.
Shane twists to meet Ilya’s eye. He sees his own heart reflected back at him. “The best.”
“You are sure?”
He feels the deeper questions there. Sees the quiet conversations he and Ilya had in bed for months leading up to submitting their application last year. Shane knows this will test them, but that too is part of the joy of parenthood, right? His desire to see Ilya be a father to their children far outweighs his fear that they will inevitably make mistakes.
“You’ll be the best father a kid could ask for Ilya. You’re kind, and soft, and you see everything. I’ve never been worried.”
Ilya chokes on a laugh. “You were worried earlier.”
“Yeah, about if we’d ever get a match. Not if you’d be an amazing dad. I’ve never doubted that.”
Ilya’s eyebrows pinch together, his mouth twisting down at the edges, and it’s the only warning Shane gets before there’s a head of blonde curls buried against his chest. He moves to card his fingers through Ilya’s hair on instinct, scratching at his scalp, as they sit twisted together on the dock.
“I think you will be great too, Shane,” Ilya mutters into the fabric of his t-shirt.
“Of course I will. I’ve always been number one.”
Ilya mock gasps, sitting up to glare at Shane. “Hm, maybe the number one bossiest.”
“As if. Don’t act like you won’t be a helicopter parent.”
“I know we are rich but I don’t think you will ever let me buy a helicopter.”
The laugh shoots out of him, echoing across the still water of the lake. “No that’s - that’s not what that means.”
“Oh? So I will not take our children on joyrides over Pike’s house just to piss him off?”
And there’s something delicious and achy about the way Ilya says children so casually, as if it’s as easy as breathing, as if despite his trepidation he too is so sure of them, of their family, of their future. Shane lets his laugh dissolve into something quiet and fond.
“You’re ridiculous.”
Ilya smiles, and Shane would frame the sight of it. He has. “You love me, though.”
“Yeah I do. So much.”
Then, he kisses Ilya, because there is never a moment where the urge isn’t simmering on the tip of his tongue.
Ilya, as always, meets him halfway.
*
Laura calls them the next morning just after breakfast.
Shane is overwhelmed immediately, with love and awe and fear and too many things for him to name. He feels like the sun has exploded inside his chest and is spilling out of every orifice.
“They rang the agency this morning,” Laura is saying from the phone he is gripping in his hand. “They said, and I quote, ‘This is exactly who she needs to be with. They’re everything I dreamed of. I’ve never been more sure. I choose them.’”
It’s only been a day. Barely, actually, maybe like eighteen hours since they hung up from Laura yesterday.
He had been sure they would be forced to wait longer.
He had been so sure.
His pulse is pounding in his ear, in his throat, almost breaking through his ribcage.
He’s breathing too quickly.
“They’re sure?” someone chokes out, and he belatedly realises it’s Ilya. Ilya, who is standing right in front of Shane, only wearing boxers and his fluffy dog slippers. “They’re absolutely sure?”
“It’s confirmed, dear,” Laura says. “Congratulations. As of about twenty minutes ago, you officially became parents to a beautiful little girl.”
The floodgates open.
Shane is not really a crier. He can probably count on both hands the amount of time he’s outright sobbed in his life. They might even all fit on one hand. He knows he definitely did when he broke his arm at age six, falling from a tree in the yard of his childhood home ten minutes up the road. He had cried, and screamed, and snot had been covering his face by the time his dad had bundled him into the backseat of the car and rushed him to the hospital. Yuna had cradled his small body against her own, pressing reassuring kisses into his hairline and trying to keep his fractured arm still.
This is different.
This is relief and happiness and joy so all-consuming his body doesn't know what to do with it but purge.
Shane falls to his knees on their living room floor. Presses the phone to his forehead as the other clutches at his hair.
Shane sobs.
His whole body is shaking with it, heaving and ugly and raw. He’s sure Laura is saying something down the line but he can’t, for the life of him, tell what it is.
Parents.
A beautiful little girl.
Theirs.
“Shane.”
Hands, on his shoulders. Tangling through the hair at the nape of his neck. Running down his back where he’s curled forward. He feels something small and wet lick at his thigh. The phone is gently pried from his hand.
“She is really ours?” Ilya asks. “There is not more things to sign, or agree on, or …”
“You’ll still have to go through a placement period, and there will be some check ins and milestones still to hit including an eventual court date like we discussed yesterday. But yes, she’s yours, Ilya. Both of yours. Congratulations again!”
“Oh.”
Shane forces himself to sit back from his fetal twist against the floor. He keeps his hands gripping at his hair, because otherwise he doesn’t know what to do with them, and the tears are still pouring from his eyes hard enough that he can barely see Ilya.
His husband has moved to kneel across from him, phone held out between them. His free hand is covering his mouth and his eyes are impossibly wide.
“This is happening,” Ilya says. “This is really happening.”
Laura’s soft laughter drifts from the phone.
Shane’s throat has closed up entirely.
Suddenly, Ilya is laughing too.
Not the mocking way he does on the ice when he’s chirping, or the soft way he does when Shane surprises him with something. Ilya laughs deeply, fully, as he maybe never has before. The smile that splits his face is so wide it looks like it might tear him in two. Shane is sure he has never seen Ilya smile like this in all the years he has known him.
“Shane, it’s happening!” he laughs, the sound echoing in the rafters of the cottage. “Moya lyubov! Shane! She’s ours!”
Shane keeps crying, incapable of anything else.
The phone and Laura are forgotten to the rug then as Ilya all-but tackles Shane backwards to the floor. Their bodies slot together perfectly as Ilya half straddles Shane, one hand on either side of his face.
Ilya laughs. Shane sobs. Anya circles them, barking happily at the commotion.
“She’s ours,” Shane manages to squeak out, his body and brain still disconnected ever since hearing the words ‘I choose them’.
Ilya beams like the sun. Then, as if he is trying to shout it to the heavens, screams, in Russian, “She’s ours!”
It is, maybe, the happiest moment of Shane’s life.
*
Meeting their daughter for the first time is a close second.
They immediately start gathering their things after hanging up with Laura. Thanks to Ilya’s fretting and Shane’s organising, the cottage and the house in Ottawa are both fully equipped with supplies (and have been for months), from bassinets to nappies to clothes, but they still stop by the grocery store that afternoon to pick up formula and other perishables.
They leave for Toronto early the next morning after another sleepless night. Shane drives, because he thinks he might go insane without a task, which leaves Ilya to call Yuna and David somewhere on the highway between their home and their suddenly newfound heart.
Yuna cries and immediately badgers them with questions. David offers his congratulations and Shane can hear him sniffling in the background as his mother near-interrogates them. They both insist on coming over once the three of them are settled back at the cottage. Shane chokes up a little again when his mother says that. The three of them.
Ilya holds Shane’s hand the entire drive.
Four-hundred and fifty kilometres has never felt so far.
They make it to Toronto just after lunch. They make it to the hospital about thirty minutes later.
Part of Shane is glad that he broke down so thoroughly on their living room floor yesterday, because it stops him from becoming a blubbering mess the second they round the corner to see ‘Maternity Wing’ printed in bold blue lettering on the doorway.
Ilya is still holding his hand. Shane has never been more thankful for something.
There’s paperwork, because of course there is, and nurses with many questions. A kind woman from the agency Laura works at speaks with them briefly, as does another adoption practitioner that Shane immediately forgets the name of. It is all very quick and simple, in the grand scheme of things, but they have already waited so long and all Shane wants is to see her. To see their daughter.
They’ve waited long enough.
“Ready?” Ilya asks him once they are finally shown down the never-ending corridor and directed to a small room labelled ‘84’. The irony of it, for once, doesn’t escape Shane.
He looks at Ilya, and knows this will be the most important door they walk through. “Yeah. You?”
“I think so, yes,” Ilya smiles, the edges wobbling slightly. Shane kisses him for both their sakes.
They open the door.
Their future bursts out in front of them.
She is … so very small.
Shane isn’t quite sure what he expected. He’s seen enough babies in his life to know this is normal, has babysat for Hayden enough when his kids were little, has seen babies brought to the rink in celebration whenever someone on his team had a kid, and yet her tiny body swaddled and laid out in the hospital bassinet still makes his heart near crack in two. There’s a shock of dark hair at her head already. Her arms are free of her swaddle and twisted in the soft pink material where it’s decorated with unicorns and flowers.
She is less than a week old. She is perfect.
“Shane …” Ilya mutters, equally as transfixed.
“I know.”
“She is beautiful.” Ilya reaches out and gently, more gently than Shane has ever seen him, runs the pad of his finger across her scrunched up forehead. “She has your hair.”
“You can’t possibly tell that yet.”
Ilya is smiling softly, unable to take his eyes off her. “I can. She is perfect.”
Shane reaches out with his pinky finger, instinct really he supposes. Within seconds she has loosely grabbed his finger with all five ones of her own, her skin warm and soft against his own. The grip is unsure for all of two seconds before she has attached herself to him with a content little sound, face shifting in concentration. He doesn’t realise he has started crying until a tear drops and soaks into the fabric of her swaddle.
When he looks up, Ilya is staring between Shane, their daughter, and where their hands meet with tears in his own eyes.
He wishes he could bottle this moment forever.
They just stand there, staring at her, until the nurse gently clears her throat from where she’d been observing quietly in the corner. “Would you like to hold her? We recommend skin-to-skin contact to help with bonding.”
Shane immediately looks to Ilya with a small smile. “You should.”
Ilya’s expression shatters for a second before quickly fusing back together. “Are you sure?”
“Sit down, I’ll grab her for you.” A beat, and then he quickly looks back to the nurse. “Sorry if this is weird, but could you take some photos for us? I … I want to remember this.”
She is already reaching out a hand towards him. “Of course. I’ll fill your phone with them, don’t worry.”
Their mantle full of framed photos lingers in the back of his mind. “Thank you.”
“Let me show you how the swaddle unwraps,” she offers, pointing out clasps and what’s tucked in where until Shane has disentangled her tiny body from the pink material. Meanwhile, Ilya hesitantly moves to the armchair in the corner. He pulls his shirt over his head and Shane thinks this might be the first time in his life he’s been more interested in something other than his husband’s naked chest.
Once everyone is situated, the nurse meets Shane’s eye with a kindness so profound that he can’t hold eye contact. “Do you need me to help you with holding her?”
Shane is already gently reaching down to clutch his daughter’s small body in his hands. “No, that’s ok. I’ve got her.”
She is barely the length of his forearm. The weight of her settles easily in his arms and she makes another little sound that digs right through his ribs to his heart. She has abandoned his pinky to stretch all four of her limbs, but he forgives her instantly. Shane suddenly understands what Hayden had confessed to him once, how it feels like having your heart torn from your chest and given legs. He knows immediately, holding her in his arms, that he would do anything for this little girl. He would give her the world, the moon and the stars and the whole entire universe, even if she didn’t ask for it.
He supposes nine months of waiting is worth it, to be standing in this moment with her. He would do it over tenfold.
When he turns to Ilya, his husband looks suddenly terrified.
“Sorry, Ilya,” Shane whispers with a smile as he walks over, “you have to share space in my heart now I think.”
Ilya huffs out a laugh. He doesn't look like he’s breathing.
Shane pauses between Ilya’s legs. He asks gently, in Russian, “You okay?”
Ilya just nods. Swallows roughly. Then, holds his arms open.
Holding her himself was one thing. Seeing the way she immediately shifts to press herself to Ilya’s bare chest, seeing the way Ilya’s huge frame near swallows her up protectively, seeing the sheen of tears that immediately springs to Ilya’s eyes as he cradles the back of her tiny head with one large palm, Shane thinks he almost loves this more.
Ilya’s a natural.
Shane knew he would be, has seen him with enough kids over the years, but it still takes his breath away.
My husband. My daughter.
Shane crouches by Ilya’s side, a hand on his knee, and simply watches for a long moment. Her little cheek is squished against Ilya’s chest, her lips in an adorable pout, dark eyebrows soft in contentment. She shifts and hums softly, making incoherent newborn noises. Ilya’s hands unconsciously run back and forward against her as he, too, makes little comforting noises under his breath. Shane’s not sure he even realises he’s doing it.
Ilya’s expression is raw and open in a way it so rarely ever is, everything plainly written between his eyes and in the soft crease of his brow. Shane watches to see if he spots any fear there, any pain, but if he does it slips away quickly into wonder and that is enough to set his heart at ease. The only part of this whole process Shane has despised has been seeing Ilya doubt himself. He won’t let him stumble. Not now. Not after everything.
The moment stretches.
A few stray tears slip down Ilya’s cheeks. Shane kisses them away.
He presses a soft kiss to the top of their daughter's head too. The first of many, a lifetime’s worth.
“Do you have a name picked out?” the nurse softly asks from the corner. She still has Shane’s phone raised.
He looks to Ilya and nods. Ilya sniffs gently, presses a kiss of his own to the top of their little girl’s head, and whispers, “Alina.”