This morning, she had been sleeping in instead of going with Justin to the stable. It was the weekend, so Justin let out the horses and took them in. Normally, during the weeks, the new stable manager Sarah did all the tasks Justin had back when they first moved to this house.
It felt so weird that they’d lived here twelve years. It had gotten to a point where Harper could remember fuzzy details of her first home and some more vivid, happier ones from Dad’s old house, but that was it.
She got up and unwrapped her hair. When she’d gone to therapy that first year in California, her therapist had been a black woman called Anita. She’d taught Harper a lot about what it meant to be black, and with Dad and Justin’s blessing, Anita had become a mother figure—after she referred Harper to a colleague, of course.
They’d also figured out ways for Wyatt to connect with his Hispanic heritage to the extent Wy had wanted to, which was pretty awesome in Harper’s books. She knew that not all non-white kids with white parents had that.
Their chosen family was huge, now. There were horse owners, Dad’s staff, Justin’s staff, Dad’s actual blood family, the friends Harper, Wyatt, and Scarlett had made and by extension some of those friends’ families…So many people.
But today, she’d been promised that there would only be family around. Just the Abbots, because that was what they were all called now. Nobody in this house was an O’Dwyer, hadn’t been since Dad and Justin got married on their first Halloween in California.
The kids hadn’t understood what it meant to not be an O’Dwyer anymore, but Harper, even at seven, had known it meant the world. Here, nobody would’ve known the difference, but Harper had known, and so had Justin.
By the time she was getting dressed, there was a knock on her door.
“Yeah?”
Wy peered into the room. “Dad’s video is almost done, I think.”
“Okay, thanks. I’ll be right there.”
Wyatt at fifteen was a tall, lanky boy with floppy multi-colored hair and a shy smile. He wanted to be a chef like Dad, and if Harper knew her brother at all, Wy had made whatever cake they’d be having today. She thought Wy would end up being a pastry chef, once he got the idea that Dad would be disappointed if he chose that path instead of following in Dad’s footsteps out of his head.
She smiled as she thought about Wyatt and Dad’s relationship. She could still remember the first time Wy had called Del “Dad.” They’d been at the shelter, looking for a dog that first summer here. When a bigger dog had barked excitedly, Wy had held up his hands and frantically said “Dad, up, up, Dad!”
Yeah. Del had gone to mush. And still did sometimes. Harper knew the feeling of stopping to look around and realize where you were and with whom and feeling a bit choked up. Sure she’d been a kid when they’d left Enterprise behind, but she knew that karma had come through for the O’Dwyer kids big time.
* * * *
Harper met Justin in the hall on her way downstairs.
“Hey, I’ll go shower the horse stink off and then we can have a nice birthday breakfast,” Justin said, beaming at her.
“Yeah, meet you downstairs,” she replied, wanting to return the hug Justin was obviously eager to give but wouldn’t in his stable clothes.
Scarlett was nowhere to be seen, but because Harper could hear excited barking from the front yard, she was pretty sure that’s where she’d find Lettie and her hounds if she went to look.
In some ways, Scarlett had it easiest. She didn’t remember much at all of their old life. She’d said once, that sometimes when she sat at the old kitchen table they still had in the dining room, she had flashes of sitting by it in a high chair in a different house, but that was it.
After that first time Wyatt had called Del Dad, they’d had a talk as a family. About what they wanted to call Justin and Del. Del had explained that it might be easiest if the kids called him Dad, just because it made things easier for other people who didn’t know them to understand
They’d all since met more kids with same sex parents and there were surprisingly many families that looked a lot like theirs in their part of the country. To an outsider, whenever all five Abbots were out together, they just looked like another gay couple with their adopted kids. Some saw the likeness between Lettie and Justin though, and assumed he was her biological dad.