Chapter Text
They'd been talking about a second kid for a while now. They still wanted to play, even getting close to thirty five, even with retirement somewhere on the horizon, but they were still putting up top line numbers, so why walk away while they were still good at it. Or maybe you were supposed to walk away while you were still good at it. Ilya could never remember which way that saying was supposed to go. English made no sense half the time anyway.
They'd been out of the playoffs for two weeks now, round two, some bad bounces and a bad matchup against Scott Hunter's line that Ilya still wasn't over. But it meant they were home early, which meant actual time in the house instead of hotel rooms and charter flights. Niko still had two more weeks of half day pre-k before they could take off for the cottage, and Ilya was cutting up an apple for him when he got home when there was a knock at the door.
He wiped his hands on his jeans and opened it to Miranda standing on the porch.
"Hey," he said. "Everything okay?"
It wasn't unusual for her to drop by unannounced, just a check in, and she'd gotten a lot better at explaining what these visits actually meant over the years. She used to make it sound like they were in trouble. Now she just showed up and had coffee.
"Hi Ilya. How's the fam?"
"Good. Niko's not home yet, he's got another half hour," Ilya said, stepping back to let her in. "Shane's outside."
"That's fine, this one isn't about Niko."
Ilya went to the back door and yelled for Shane, who came in a minute later still catching his breath from whatever he'd been doing with the basketball, and dropped into the chair next to Ilya at the table.
"Hey Miranda. What's up?"
"So," she said, "you two have mentioned a couple times that you'd maybe want to do this again. A second kid."
They both nodded.
"I want to say up front, no pressure at all, it's completely normal to say no to this kind of thing. But would you be open to an older kid? Six?"
Ilya glanced at Shane. They had talked about this, actually talked about it, more than once, late at night after Niko was asleep. "Yeah," Ilya said. "We said we'd be open to it."
"Good, because I do need to be upfront that older placements work differently than Niko's did. With Niko you had him adopted inside of six months. This might not go that way. It could be temporary."
"We know," Shane said. "We talked about that too. We're okay with temporary if that's what she needs."
"Okay." Miranda pulled a folder out of her bag but didn't open it yet. "This would be an emergency placement. Six year old girl, her mom's currently awaiting trial. If she's convicted we'd be looking at a permanent placement down the line. If she's acquitted, the mom gets her back."
"What's it looking like for the mom?" Ilya asked.
"I can't really get into specifics before a verdict," Miranda said. "But from what her lawyer's implied, a plea deal isn't off the table, and that would mean prison time."
"So it's temporary that might turn permanent," Shane said.
"Right."
"And the kid, is she doing okay?"
Miranda opened the folder and turned the picture around so they could see it. Blond hair, almost white blond, green eyes, freckles across her nose. "Her name's Mira Miller. I've met with her a few times now. She's sweet, she's funny once she warms up, a little shy at first but she makes friends fast once she does." She paused, and Ilya could see her deciding how to say the next part. "Her mom's had substance abuse issues for a while. We don't have a full picture of what Mira's seen because of it, but," another pause, "Mira has a younger sister, Emma, who died a few weeks ago. Overdose, shortly after she was born. And before that, when Mira was four, she was the one who got a neighbor to call 911 after she couldn't wake her mom up from an overdose."
The kitchen went quiet.
Ilya felt his stomach drop somewhere it hadn't dropped in years. Four years old. Shaking your mom's shoulder and getting nothing back, and knowing, somehow, to go get help. He didn't say anything for a second because his brain had gone somewhere else entirely, back to being twelve and finding his own mother on the floor, and the specific silence of a house where you already know before you've checked. He hadn't had anyone to run to. He'd stood there a long time before he did anything at all.
"Ilya?" Shane's hand landed on his knee under the table, grounding.
"Sorry," Ilya said, shaking it off. "She called police herself? At four?"
"Not herself, technically," Miranda said. "She went to a neighbor's, banged on the door until someone answered, and they called it in. But functionally, yeah. She's the reason anyone knew something was wrong."
Shane hadn't said much. His jaw was tight and his leg had started bouncing under the table, the thing he did when he needed his hands busy and didn't have anything to do with them.
"And Emma," Ilya said, working to keep his voice even. "That was how long ago?"
"Four weeks. Mira wasn't in the home when it happened, she was at her grandmother's for the weekend. That's actually why the case moved fast, her grandmother called it in, and CPS already had a file on the family from the first incident."
"So she wasn't there for that one," Shane said.
"No. But she knows. She's six, not four anymore, she understands her sister died and she understands it has something to do with why her mom's gone." Miranda let that sit a second. "She's a resilient kid. I don't say that about every case. But resilient doesn't mean she isn't carrying a lot."
Ilya rubbed a hand over his face. Upstairs, or wherever Niko actually was right now, hopefully still innocent of the idea that mothers could just stop waking up. He thought about a six year old who'd already had to be the brave one twice.
"She sounds like she grew up too fast," he said finally.
"That's exactly it," Miranda said.
Shane looked over at him, and Ilya looked back, and neither of them said the actual thing yet, the thing where Ilya's heart had already started making room for this kid without asking permission first. Shane could see it happening. He always could. This time he didn't try to slow it down.
"Okay," Shane said, turning back to Miranda. "What do you need from us."
Miranda pulled a second folder out of her bag, thinner than the first one, and set it on the table without opening it yet.
"Okay. Logistics." She glanced between them. "First thing, this would move fast if you say yes. We're talking days, not weeks. She's currently in an emergency foster home but it's not a good long term fit, the family already has three placements and Mira needs more one on one than they can give her right now."
"How fast is fast?" Shane asked.
"Best case, we could have her here by the end of the week." Miranda paused, then huffed out a small laugh. "Honestly, probably faster than that, if I'm being real with you. You guys remember how Niko went, I called you and had him at your door thirty six hours later. Not exactly my best social work moment, professionally speaking, I was still pretty new and I definitely skipped some steps I shouldn't have. But you two just, handled it. You handled it so well, and look at him now, he's like, genuinely one of the most well adjusted kids I work with. So I'm not going to pretend I'm not thinking about that when I say I want this placement to go to you."
Ilya felt something warm and a little embarrassed twist in his chest at that. "He's a good kid," he said, like that explained anything.
"He's an incredible kid," Miranda said. "And I know you two put real work into that, it wasn't luck. I know you're both still involved with the mental health foundation stuff, the youth programs. That matters to me here too. I don't know everything about what Mira's case is going to need yet, kids like her sometimes need more than a stable house, they need people who actually take that seriously. I just want her somewhere safe. I think that's you."
"Why isn't she with family," Ilya asked. "Grandmother, you said."
"Right, so." Miranda opened the folder. "Her paternal grandmother was actually being looked at as a placement, she petitioned for it early on. But she was diagnosed with stage three cancer about two months ago and started chemo, and honestly, she's not physically able to take on a six year old right now. She still wants to be involved, she calls Mira, she wants visits when she's up for it, but she can't be primary care."
"And Mira's dad?" Shane asked.
"Incarcerated. Drug charges. He's been in since Mira was two, so she doesn't really have a relationship with him beyond visits, and honestly those have been inconsistent because of the prison's visitation policies."
"So it's just been her mom," Ilya said.
"Mostly, yeah. Her mom, Dafne, and then Dafne's relationship with Mira's father is actually where it gets a little more complicated." Miranda sat back. "Dafne and Mira's father were married. Dafne has Canadian permanent residency through the marriage, but she never went through citizenship. She's a US citizen originally."
"Okay," Shane said slowly.
"So Mira is fine, she was born here, she's a Canadian citizen, no immigration complications for her at all. But if Dafne is convicted, given the severity of the charges, there's a real chance she'd be facing deportation on top of any prison sentence. And because of the nature of what she's charged with, that could mean serving time back in the US rather than here."
Ilya sat with that for a second. "So even if, what, even if things went well for her legally here, she could still end up somewhere else entirely."
"It's possible. I won't pretend to know exactly how it'll shake out, immigration and criminal cases don't always move on the same timeline, and honestly this is a little outside my expertise. But I wanted you to have the full picture, because it does affect how likely a permanent placement becomes, and I don't want you going into this blind."
Shane exhaled through his nose, one hand coming up to rub at his jaw. "So worst case for Mira's mom is basically the best case for permanency."
"That's a blunt way to put it, but yeah, essentially."
Nobody said anything for a second. Ilya looked at the folder sitting closed on the table, Mira's picture still facing up from before, and thought about a kid whose whole family tree was currently either in jail, dying, or possibly about to be deported.
"That's a lot for one six year old," he said quietly.
"It is," Miranda agreed. "Which is part of why I'm being this direct with you both. This isn't a simple case. If you want time to think about it, you have it, within reason, given the timeline. But if you're in, I need to know soon, and I need to know you're in with your eyes open."
Shane looked at Ilya again. He didn't ask out loud this time either, he didn't need to.
"We don't need time," Ilya said.