I let out a breath.
My neighbor lowered herself beside me. I was thinking she was probably right when the smallest baby lifted one hand, reaching blindly, and wrapped her tiny fist around my index finger. It was warm, small, and impossibly strong for a six-month-old.
I froze. I couldn’t move.
“That’s June,” Mrs. Hunter said quietly. “Patricia made sure we’d know how to tell them apart. Said the smallest one would always be June.”
“June,” I repeated, saying her name like I was checking whether I could still speak.
Baby June kept gripping my finger. She didn’t know I had no money, that I had never changed a diaper, or that her father had left them behind. She only knew someone was there.
“I’ll call social services in the morning,” my neighbor said gently. “There are good families, Noah. Ready people.”
I opened my mouth to say yes. I truly did.
“Okay,” I whispered instead, still looking at June. “Okay. Okay, I’ve got you.”
Mrs. Hunter fell silent. The porch light flickered once more.
I carried them inside one by one, and somewhere between the second trip and the third, I stopped being Uncle Noah and became something I didn’t yet have a name for.
