{Ghost}

I was in desperate need of help as a child but did not have the vocabulary to ask for what I needed. I was failed by the adults who knew something was wrong.

*opens new doc*

Shane and Ilya’s daughter has to do a family tree project in class. They’ve done a great job at emphasizing to her that parents can be any two people that love each other and she understands that other kids might not know that. The rest of the project will be pretty straight forward - Shane doesn’t have any siblings and their daughter doesn’t know much about Ilya’s family at this age besides that papa has a mama that watches over them and that loves her very much. Shane is still nervous about it and having a Very Normal Shane Reaction wondering if she will feel left out for not having a mom and feeling sad that she will never know her papas family and wondering if she is lonely and if they should have another kid. When they get an email from the school asking them to come in at pickup to discuss her family tree Ilya is already angry and ready to pick a fight with whatever stupid kid is bullying their daughter for having two dads. They walk into the classroom and their daughter is standing with her arms crossed insisting that there is nothing wrong with her project and when the teacher slides it across the table they see something so bizarre that they don’t know where to start. She’s drawn on only one side of the tree - Ilya and Shane both stemming from Yuna and David. Next to them are about ten stick figures of different sizes all with hearts around them. While they’re trying to decipher what on earth she has drawn she starts presenting it with her little finger saying “see? Dad is grandma Yuna and grandpa David’s son and Papa is grandma Yuna and grandpa David’s son, too.” And then she moves her finger along with “and that’s uncle Hayden, uncle Troy and uncle Harris, uncle Evan, uncle Luca….” And as she’s naming every stick figure Shane is trying to figure out how he’s going to explain to her teacher that he is not married to one of his 10 brothers when he is actually an only child and Ilya has to turn away because he’s crying at the reminder that the family that adopted him adopted her as well and there has never been a child that has been so loved