old girl, but we’re making it work. The guys from my motorcycle club helped me convert my office into a princess-themed bedroom. Their wives took Destiny shopping for clothes that actually fit.
She still cries sometimes. Wakes up screaming for her mama. But she also laughs now. Plays. Does homework at my kitchen table while I cook dinner. She’s teaching me how to braid hair. I’m teaching her how to change a tire. We’re both learning how to be a family.
Destiny noticed. “Why did she look at you like that?”
“Some people judge books by their covers, sweetheart.”
“That’s stupid. You’re the best person I know. You saved me.”
“No, baby girl. You saved me. I’ve been alone for forty years. Going through the motions. Existing but not living. You gave me a reason to be someone’s daddy again.”
We still go to the laundromat every Tuesday at 4 PM. Not because we need to—I have a washer and dryer now. We go because that’s where we found each other. Where a dying mother’s desperate gamble put her daughter in the path of a grieving father who’d been waiting forty years for a second chance.
Destiny doesn’t cry in my arms anymore at the laundromat. Now she helps other kids who come in alone. Shows them how to use the machines. Shares her quarters. Tells them about her Biker Dad who proved that family isn’t always about blood.
Last week, she asked if she could call me Dad. I said yes. Then I went to the bathroom and cried for twenty minutes. Because Sarah would have loved her. Because Destiny’s mama trusted me with her most precious gift. Because this little girl who should have been destroyed by loss chose love instead.
The adoption will be final next month. I’m seventy now, starting over as a father. The guys at the club think I’m crazy. Taking on a seven-year-old at my age. But they don’t understand.
Every week this little girl used toContinue reading…
