Page 69 of Everywhere You Look

“Dee dee dee!” Ollie babbles from her high chair, tracing a red crayon over the coloring sheet in front of her.

“That’s right, Ollie. That’s Dean!” I say, encouraging her. She’s got a good arsenal of words at herdisposal now, but she’s still struggling with the back half of Dean’s name.

“Dah dee. Dah dee. Dah dee.”

Umm…okay. That’s new.

“Did she just—” Deans starts, just as I say. “Is she saying?—”

“Daddy. Daddy! DADDY!” Ollie shrieks, and my jaw drops. She continues her chant, looking back and forth between Dean and me as she repeats the word over and over again.

“Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!”

“Holy sugar,” Dean mumbles. “I think Ollie is calling you Daddy.”

“I think she’s calling us Daddy,” I say, my smile splitting my face in two. Dean and I have talked about this since the custody hearing. What the girls would call us, how we’d interact with them as parents. We decided it was best for them to take the lead. We’ll continue to be Uncle Luke and Dean, but if they ever wanted to refer to us by a different name, we’d be okay with that too.

And it looks like Ollie just made the decision.

“How did you learn that word, mi pollita?” Dean asks, pinching one of Ollie’s pink, chubby cheeks.

“We taught her!” Lemmie and Mellie say together. Dean and I look at each other, then back at the girls.

“You taught Ollie how to say Daddy?” I ask,careful not to infer anything but curiosity with the tone of my words.

“Yeah! We taught her Lemmie and Mellie and Daddy. But she doesn’t say our names yet. She just says lemmel, which is close enough,” Lemmie shrugs.

“And you taught her Daddy along with your names because…”

“Because Ollie needs to know our names, and you guys are kind of like our daddies, right?”

Dean squeezes my thigh under the table, and I bite my tongue to stave off the tears threatening to spill.

“What does a Daddy mean to you, Mel?” I ask, and she taps her finger to her chin.

“A Daddy means someone who loves you and takes care of you. He feeds you breakfast and brushes your hair and plays nail salon.”

“And he teaches you things! Like Spanish and football!” Lemmie interjects.

“And he tucks you in at night and lets you sleep in his bed when you have nightmares.”

“And that’s why you and Dean are our Daddies, right? Because you love us and you take care of us?”

The girls look at us with their wide, innocent eyes, and a part of me melts. Of course, my sister is their mother. Gigi will always be their mother, and Iwill never let them forget how loved they were by her.

But this? This simple gesture from the three little people I love the most is more overwhelming than I could have ever imagined. I swipe at a stray tear on my face, and I see Dean out of the corner of my eye doing the same.

“Yes, chickadees. Me and Dean do love you, and we do take care of you, and we always will. That makes us like your daddies. And if you’d like to call us that, that would be more than okay with me.”

“Me too, mis pollitas. I’d be honored to be your Daddy.”

“Perfect!” Mellie says, clapping her hands together, and Lemmie does the same.

“You’ll be Daddy Luke, and you’ll be Daddy Dean. And we are Lemmie and Mellie and Ollie! One big happy family!”

I take one of Dean’s hands in mine, and one of Mellie’s in the other. Mellie grabs Lemmie’s hand, and Lemmie and Dean each grab one of Ollie’s, so we all form a big circle.

“One big happy family,” I say.

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