Elliot stepped closer and lowered his voice.
“You planned this?”
His expression twisted with anger.
“You dragged me across town to humiliate me in front of carnival workers and children?”
Several teenagers nearby had stopped looking at their phones.
They openly watched us.
The twins looked up at me, sensing that something serious was happening.
I placed one hand on each boy’s shoulder.
“Everything is okay,” I told them. “We’re going to take a special photograph—just the three of us.”
Elliot gave a bitter laugh.
“You’re going to regret this.”
He glanced at the boys.
“No man will want you when you come with two children attached.”
“Then it’s fortunate that I want myself,” I replied.
“And I want them. That is more than enough.”
The photographer covered a surprised laugh with a cough.
One of the teenagers whispered, “She destroyed him.”
A man standing nearby lifted his phone and began recording.
Elliot suddenly lost control.
“You’re seriously ending our engagement because of somebody else’s children?”
His voice carried across the fairground.
“Are you insane?”
People turned toward us.
The twins pressed themselves against my legs.
“They are my brothers,” I said sharply. “They are not somebody else’s children.”
“All I asked was that you place them in foster care!”
Elliot threw his hands into the air.
“That is completely normal! And you’re choosing them over me?”
A woman nearby gasped.
“Did he just say foster care?” she asked. “About those little boys?”
An older man stepped forward and glared at Elliot.
“You should be ashamed of yourself,” he said. “You’re publicly screaming at a woman because she refused to abandon her orphaned brothers.”
He pointed away from us.
“Walk away before you humiliate yourself any further.”
Another woman called from the crowd.
“Honey, you avoided a disaster. Good for you.”
Elliot looked around in disbelief.
“You don’t understand the complete story!” he protested. “She lied to me. She tricked me into coming here!”
“It sounds as though she was wise to do it,” a young mother replied while pulling her toddler closer.
Elliot searched the crowd for one sympathetic expression.
He found none.
Finally, he turned and stormed through the fairgrounds, pushing past several strangers as he disappeared.
I released a slow breath.
The photographer looked at me gently.
“Do you still want the picture?”
I knelt between my brothers and wrapped my arms around them.
“More than anything.”
They smiled as the photographer raised the camera.
“Ready?” she asked.
The boys pressed their cheeks against mine.
The camera flashed.
It captured the first genuine photograph of our new family.
