Abandoned, But Not Alone

26 - Wonderful Secret

~Sam's POV~

I got up in the morning and sat at the table on my laptop.

"Whatcha doing, Daddy?" Hannah asked.

"I'm looking up stuff so I can teach you writing." I explained to her. She suddenly lit up with a smile.

"Are you finding anything?" She asked excitedly. It was so cute seeing her so into learning. She was so interested in everything.

"I'm still looking." I answered. She nodded then went out and joined Dean on the couch. Suddenly, I got a phone call. "Hello?" I asked.

"Hi, Sam?"

"Yes." I had no idea who was calling.

"This is Rachel with child services. We talked not too long ago about you guys getting custody of Hannah." What was wrong? I asked myself. I took the call to my room so Hannah wouldn't hear anything.

"Yes, ma'am. Is something wrong with the custody stuff?" I asked, hoping the answer was no.

"No, no. You still have custody. I worked with the court and you are allowed to adopt Hannah. It was a hard push, but I did it. I just need you to come down to my office and sign some papers. Congratulations! " She explained. I was so happy.

"Ok. Dean and I will come down today." I replied.

"I should have explained a little more. Since you are brothers and not a couple, due to the way the court sets up adoption stuff, only one of you can be the technical adoptive parent. Only married couples can adopt and both be parents, otherwise, only one guardian can adopt. Does that make sense? I just need to know who it is." She explained. I wasn't sure what to do. Then I thought about it. Dean and Hannah had such a great bond. He was the best one for her. I was gonna have him be her parent.

"Ok. I'll have Dean do it. I don't know if you can do this, but I have a question.... When he signs it, can you convince him it's just a paper he forgot to sign last time that you ran across? I want to surprise them both with this." I asked. I wanted to surprise him with it, plus, he would probably argue with me over it.

"I can try. Just have Dean come down this afternoon." She added.

"I will. Thank you." I stated before she hung up. I walked out to Dean.

"Hey, who called?" He questioned.

"The lady from child services. There's papers you need to sign. I guess you missed something last time." I informed him. "She wants you to go down there this afternoon."

"Ok. I'll head out." He replied. He grabbed his keys and left. I kept searching for writing activities for Hannah. I was thinking about things with the adoption and realized that tomorrow, it would already be Hannah's birthday again. It felt crazy that it had already been more than a  year since we took her in. I kept searching and actually found something after a while.

~Dean's POV~

I showed up to the lady's office and was let back. "You had a form you needed me to sign?" I asked.

"Yes, sir. You just need to sign these last two pages. It's confirming the custody and saying that you and your brother would like to adopt if the court agrees." She explained. I nodded, glanced over it, and signed it. "Thank you. I'll let you know if anything happens."

"Thank you." I replied. I was happy that the forms were finally done and we could only hope that the court would hurry up and decide we could adopt her. I drove back to the bunker and saw Sam was still searching. "Find anything for Hannah?" I asked him.

"Yeah. I think so. I'll start with her tomorrow." He answered. We sat at the kitchen table and got some lunch before Sam got another phone call.

~Sam's POV~

"Hello?" I answered.

"It's Rachel from child custody again." I took it to the other room. "He signed them and you officially adopted her. If you can, come down tomorrow and you can get the official documents for everything. I would say just come back today, but we close in 5 minutes for lunch, and I took a half day today."

"Ok. I'll be there tomorrow. Thanks for calling." I said before hanging up. "The child services lady has some official documents to give us tomorrow." I explained to Dean. Dean nodded and we finished our lunch. We hung out the rest of the day. We put Hannah to bed and she fell asleep in a flash. Dean suspected nothing and we all headed to bed. It was a good change. There was no arguing, no tough conversations, just hanging out and then going to sleep.

The next morning I got up and started with Hannah. "Ok. So just do what the instructions on the page say and I'll see how you do. It was questions that dealt with spelling and basic grammar. It asked her to write basic sentences about her and her family, etc. it was checking how she ordered her verbs and if she could spell her name, and things like that. I looked at her answers and they were all over the place. She didn't quite know the way to order things in sentences. She talked in the right order but didn't know how to write it. Her spelling was decent, but the grammar was a problem.

"How was it?" She asked.

"I'm gonna have to see if I can explain how grammar works. You haven't been taught the order to write the words in. Just give me a bit and I'll try to find something." She nodded and sat next to me as I looked. I spent an hour searching before I found it. "Ok. I found something." I spoke up. I explained everything the website said. It explained what verbs, nouns, and adjectives were and it explained the order in sentences. She seemed like she was getting it, so I had her take the test again. She did a lot better.

"Wow. You did a lot better this time. You're really getting the hang of it. I need to keep working on it with you, but you're doing really well." I told her.

"Yay!" She wrapped me in a hug. "Thanks for teaching me again." She added.

"No problem, kiddo." We got some lunch and then I headed out to get the adoption papers.