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She’s four years old and she’s got a mop of red curls sat atop her pale and freckled face and she’s perfect. She’s sat on the play rug with a Lego castle stacked high up to her forehead, one hand tangled in her hair, the other held fast to her colourful kingdom. She’s staring right at you.
Her eyes are the colour of celery and her cheeks are round and rosy and you know that she’s yours now, no doubt about it. So you kneel down next to her and offer a Lego queen to fill the empty throne at the top of the highest tower and she takes it and she grins and your heart’s melting because she’s so beautiful when she smiles and it’s love.
And you can think only of what colour she’ll want to paint her room and what she’ll want for her birthday and what kind of pet she’ll want and that’s when you know what you need.
So you ask her what her name is and she giggles like bells chiming and whispers like it’s a secret.
“Aoife-Brigitte,”
Your hand finds his and you squeeze so tight that his fingers pop but there’s no complaints because he’s smiling down at her and asking all of the things you want to know so badly. Her favourite colour (orange), flower (tiger lilies – like the ones that her teachers holding in her wedding picture), television show (The Magic School Bus and Mythbusters), movie (The Incredibles), animal (foxes) and before you know it she’s curled up asleep in your arms (that hand still grasping at her curls) and he’s putting away the book that she fell asleep to.
The social worker leads you to her room and you’ve never had to do anything as difficult as laying her down and tucking her tiny form into the thick fluff of her blanket. You can feel the tears slicking your cheeks as you press a kiss to the top of her head and you hold on a little tighter for a little longer because who knows if and when you’ll ever see her again and that’s not right.
He grabs your face and wipes the tears away, whispering words of reassurance and love because she’s gonna be ours okay? Listen to me. She’s ours. Come on, we’ve got papers to sign. And you let him drag you away because those words are echoing around your head and your heart and you feel like falling apart where you’re standing because.
She’s going to be ours and we’ll love her so much and I get to hold her and kiss her every day and there’s nothing better than the feeling rushing over you right now.
+
You’ve still got the forms framed and hung in the house to this day, eleven years later, and you still like to trace over the smudged ink and tearstains with shaky fingers and a quiet smile because that was the moment that you knew how much you could love someone and its terrifying.
You always flashback to the sound of Peter joking, “He could tell you to stop breathing and you probably would.” and the sound of his sharp inhale when he realized how true that statement was. He’d called it unhealthy and you’d agreed, still do, but now. Now if you were to take all of your love for Stiles and multiplied it by three you still wouldn’t come close to how much love you hold in your heart for Aoife-Brigitte (she prefers Effy now though). You love her so much that it burns like fire when she goes out with her friends and sometimes you can’t sleep when she’s at camp because you always wants to hold her close. Stiles just laughs at how wrapped around her little finger you are, poking fun at you when you go out to buy more socks and come home with that dress that you knows she’s been eyeing instead, shy smile plastered on your face all the while Stiles is yelling at you for forgetting the socks, grinning bashfully when you ask him to just think of how beautiful Effy’ll look when she tries it on! And when she sees it, she’ll be so happy!
The first time she said she hated you, you cried for a day straight and Stiles sent Effy to stay with her Grandfather for the rest of the week. He spent those days making a list of reasons that proved how much Effy really did love you. She signed it in gold pen that sparkles like her favourite lip gloss and you cried for another whole day when you got it.
(You still keep it in your wallet to this day.)
You love her more than you love yourself and sometimes you have nightmare about how you’d feel if you’d had four kids instead of just the one.
The feeling of that much overwhelming love.
That wave of emotion drowning you but then you think, maybe, just maybe, that wouldn’t be the worst way to die.