Infinite

Ronnie and I decided on a little restaurant on our way back towards the house. We ushered Arch out of the car and inside as he rambled our ears off, clinging to Ronnie's neck as the older man trudged him inside.

"Arch, calm down," I said, easing him down to a respectable indoor voice as the few people inside looked our direction. A woman smiled and grabbed a couple of things off the counter and headed over to us. Ron and I waited for her and Arch kept talking.

"Hello, welcome to Stella's," she greeted, grinning at Arch as his eyebrows perked up and he reached for one of the faded menus with wilted edges. "Here you go, sweetheart. Where would you three like to sit?"

Arch quickly looked around the building, eying the wide room, numerous windows, and typical red leather booths sat opposite of narrow tables and chairs. He practically felt backwards out of Ronnie's arms when he whipped around to study the other side. "There!" he said loudly, pointing to a random booth in the corner.

I hushed him, but the woman laughed. "It's no problem," she said, "I have two boys of my own. They don't quite grasp the concept of quiet." With another chuckle, she lead us over to the spot that Arch pointed out and asked us for our drink orders as she set the remaining menus down in front of Ronnie and I.

"I'm Steph, I'll be taking care of you today," she said as she wrote down our drinks, "Stella was my mother."

Arch sat on my other side, boxed in by the wall and me. He climbed up on his knees and leaned his elbows on the table. "I'm Arch," he said simply, "Like Noah and the animals."

Steph grinned and held her free hand out to him. "It's very nice to meet you, Arch. What would you like to drink?"

Arch grinned sneakily, not meeting mine or Ronnie's eyes and shouted, "Mountain Dew!"

She was just about to write it down when I intersected, "No, I don't think so," I rebutted, giving Arch a little look when he complained. I turned and spoke to him. "You don't need that much caffeine, Arch. You hardly even like Mountain Dew. Pick something else."

He put on his dramatic thinking face then shouted, "Redbull!"

Ronnie laughed and I shook my head, turning to meet his clear eyes with my dark ones. "How do you even know what that is?" I questioned rhetorically, seeing as neither Ronnie nor I drank it. I turned and answered the waitress for him, "He'll take a glass of chocolate milk."

Steph nodded and penned it down. She grinned up at us. "I'll be right back with your drinks."

Arch sat down on his butt and nodded. "Okay, see you then." He grinned his usual charming smile and watched as she chuckled and left the three of us at our table.

I smoothed Arch's hair down on his head as he chatted distractedly with Ronnie about what they'd both been up to during their time apart. Ronnie leaned across the table as he spoke, his eyes intently trained on the little boy. When he would catch me looking, he'd smile and slowly move his gaze away again, as though he didn't want me to notice him noticing so that I would keep my eyes on him.

But I didn't move them away anyways.

Steph returned with two Cokes and a huge glass of chocolate milk and folded back the pages of her notebook. "Alright, have you guys decided what you'd like?"

I glanced down at the menu, finally actually seeing it. "I think we'll need one more minute," I said, reaching over to open Arch's for him. I pointed to the kids' section and he began reading the words to himself the best he could.

The waitress left us again and Arch and Ronnie distracted themselves by obnoxiously slurping their drinks. Ron showed Arch how to blow bubbles in his milk using his straw by sticking his own in and the two of them went to town.

"Guys, knock it off," I said, chuckling as Arch screeched with laughter as the milk bubbles over the glass and slid down to the table, "You're making a mess."

Arch laughed as Ronnie sopped up the milk and the child went right back to blowing bubbles. Ron shook his head, managing to convince Arch to drink it instead.

We decided to let Arch eat before we sprung the news on him. We didn't have much time to explain everything to him before Ronnie was set to leave, but we wanted to give him an afternoon before we shattered this idea of what his life was that he had concocted in his head. From his mother's, to Will and Olivia, and then to us, Arch hadn't had it easy, but his last move, his journey to us, it was the easiest thing for him to accept, because he saw us as family and he truly believed, despite what we'd told him, that he would always remain with us.

Bringing his mother into his life would destroy that hope in him and he would be thrust into the reality that there was a possibility that his mother, the woman who left him, would take him back, take him from us, and that was the one thing that he was afraid of.

I wasn't sure whether to tell him at the restaurant or to take him home first. I didn't want him to remember it and associate it with our house, but telling him in public seemed cruel and heartless.

So Ronnie and I gathered him up and drove around for awhile, listening to music and chatting with him. We drove up to one of the forest preserves outside of the city and he 'ooed' and 'awwed' over the leaves and trees and animals. Ronnie pulled over on the side of the narrow road and we got out to sit on a bench that faced the river.

"Arch, baby, we need to talk to you about something important," I said, easing into it as he climbed back onto the bench between us.

He frowned but nodded, highly aware of acute changes in our demeanor. Softly, he leaned back against the wood and asked, "What's wrong?" looking between us for a sense of what was happening.

"Today, we went and we saw Ms. Lyla and the three of us met with your mom," I explained, even though he had already been told about it previously, "And when we all talked with a judge, he decided that it would be best for everyone if your mom was allowed to come visit you every once in awhile."

"What do you mean?" he questioned, his eyes widening as he thought through the words in his head, "Is my mom coming to get me? Do I have to go home with her? I thought I got to stay with you guys, I don't want to go." Tears didn't well in his eyes until his last line and then he shook his head forcefully, trying to shake the thoughts right out of his head. "Atticus, Ronnie, I love you," he said, almost pleadingly, "Please don't send me away."

I sucked in a brave breath and pulled him into my side. "Arch, you're not going anywhere," I promised, gently rubbing his back, "You're going to stay with us for as long as we can keep you, but while you're here, your mom just wants to see you. It'll be okay, I promise."

"I don't want her to come," he spoke into my shoulder, "Please don't let her find me. She'll take me away and she hates me, I know she does. I don't want to go with her."

My heart was breaking while he spoke. I didn't know any other five year old in the world who believed that their own mother hated them. I had heard the stories in the early days of Arch's abandonment. How his father died overseas and his mother hated the sight of him - hated the image of her husband that she saw in the eyes of her own son.

She loved him, but she neglected him. Distraught by her own pain and immune to her child's, she left him alone at daycare and didn't come back to for him. Even though it hurt him, it turned out to be his salvation. His escape from the memories of a father he no longer had and a mother who despised him because of his genes- his similarity, his need for a dad that she couldn't bring back to him.

Arch cried, claiming that he didn't want to leave us, didn't want us to leave him. He struggled with the idea that nobody loved him and as he begged us not to send him away, I wanted nothing more than to prove to him that I never would… but I couldn't, because he would leave us eventually. He would move on to another family, one that could keep him forever and love him and raise him correctly. Either that or he'd be sent back to her.

The hardest part was that he wanted us, and we were just too wrong for him and to selfish to try to make it right.

Ronnie held onto me and I held onto Arch, trying to convince him that we loved him and we would hide him on the other side of the Earth if that was what was best for him, but he cried and held on tighter, begging and pleading for us to love him and to keep him. I pulled him onto my lap and whispered to him all the things that I thought about him. How brave and strong he had been this far and how I believed that he could handle anything.

"She's your mother," I spoke softly, my words almost swallowed up by the whistling of the air through the trees that lined the water, "And you love her despite it all. I know that you don't want to see her, but she'll come and then she'll leave and you'll be a braver boy because of it. She will not take you with her when she comes, and honestly, Arch, you don't even have to come down from the balcony if you don't want, but you're strong and you can handle anything, so I know that you'll make the right choice."

Arch shook his head, pushing away my words, and cried a little bit more about the woman that he was being forced to face. But he cried lightly now, starting to realize that Ronnie and I would always stand behind him and that no matter what happened or where he went, we would always be there waiting for one of two things to happen.

We would wait for him to be hurt again by the people who were supposed to love him the most and we would be there to sweep him away from that situation and make him feel loved and deserving of so much more than he'd been given.

Or we would wait for him to be happy and content. It was the alternative that we hoped for but doubted the most. Someday, Ronnie and I hoped that Arch would be a lively, undeniably happy person. He would look at the world and it would be concrete and real to him. There would be no chance of change and he wouldn't want it to either.

We could picture this in our heads. A version of Arch, older and wiser, and happy. He would look after the kids who younger than him and be friends with ones who were older simply because they better understood the hard things in life. He would come home and feel at peace with the version of his life that had become his reality.

That's what we all hoped we were waiting for, but deep down, even Arch thought the first more likely.

"Arch, we love you, sweetheart," I promised, curling him up in my arms like the baby that he wasn't anymore, "We love you so much and we're so sorry that this has to happen."

He sniveled, wiping his tears away and straightened out so that he was standing in front of us, his brave face on and ready for battle. "I love you two too," he said, looking at us both, "I just don't want to leave you."

I nodded and yanked him back into my arms. I didn't want to leave him either, but the life I was living was one that he couldn't be part of, and one that I wasn't willing to give up.