We weren’t expecting a five-year-old child to come into our carefree young life. Susan and I were twenty-two years old, we weren’t too busy having kids, we’d just gotten married. We lived at her mother’s house for the time being, because Susan still had to pay her tuition for medical school, and I was saving up money so that we could rent an apartment later on. We had slightly routine days, when my wife would get up and go to school, I would go to work, and in the evening we could go out or go to bed early. That suited us just fine, and it suited my mother-in-law just fine. We had a great trusting relationship with her until her son brought his five-year-old daughter into the two-room apartment. He didn’t explain anything, he didn’t say anything, he just disappeared, and then he wrote to my mother saying that he had fallen in love and left. The only good thing was that he left his daughter’s documents.
Susan felt sorry for her niece, she tried her best to surround her with a mother’s love and talk to her mother-in-law, but I didn’t understand why we had to put up with a child in our family. The only reason I didn’t speak out was because I was a bird’s-eye man in this apartment myself.
While the little girl was getting settled in, I also had to eat dinner with her and sometimes take her to the dentist or to the playground, because my mother-in-law also worked, so the three of us raised her as our own. Sometimes people would get confused and think I was her father, and that made me feel proud in some strange way and also encouraged me to think that having a child of my own was not as difficult as it had seemed at first.
When it was time to move, Susan took me into our room for a serious talk and started begging me to take the girl with us.
– We can say she’s ours.
– Yeah, and she was born when we were seventeen? Are you out of your mind?
At first I grumbled because I was afraid of being judged, but then I thought… Who cares? I don’t think anyone will ask. And if they do, you can always explain that she’s my niece and she’s staying with us temporarily, or not explain anything at all. In the two years we’ve had to live in the same apartment as her and her mother-in-law, Susan’s niece is like family to me, too.
– Okay, yes,” I agreed, “let’s take her with us. There is a school near the house, and your mom promises to help while we pay the loan for the apartment.
– Thank you! – Susan was delighted .
Seconds later, my niece, who had been eavesdropping the whole time, burst into the room, and they both started hugging me, and they both started screaming at me:
– Thank you, you’re the best!
