56. Party Charter #2
Ronan looks at me. “How long is your IUD good for?”
“A few more years.”
“Then we don’t need to make a permanent decision tonight.”
“Agreed,” Griffin says.
Micah leans against the island. “And even permanent birth control doesn’t mean every door closes forever. Foster kids need homes. Adoption exists. If five years from now all of us collectively lose our minds, there are options.”
Dex points at him. “That is both sweet and terrifying.”
Micah ignores him.
Then he looks around at all of us.
“I just don’t need a kid to make this a family.”
Nobody says anything for a second.
Because there really isn’t anything to add.
The doorbell rings.
Ronan checks the time.
And somehow that feels like an answer too.
Ronan
The notary is three minutes early.
I approve.
Three minutes is enough to indicate professionalism without creating the logistical problem of arriving before everyone is prepared.
Dex thinks this is evidence that I am fundamentally broken.
Dex thinks many things.
The signing service the attorney sent includes the notary and a witness for the documents that require one. Everything is tabbed, flagged, and arranged in the order we are supposed to sign.
I appreciate the attorney almost as much as I resent the circumstances under which we met her.
After Cami’s hospitalization, we handled the immediate problems first. Emergency contacts were updated. Medical information permissions were corrected where they could be. Everyone made sure somebody else knew where essential information lived.
Then Alexis gave Cami the name of the attorney Ethan and Jeremiah use.
The first thing the woman said to me was, “Oh, yes. Ethan told me you’d be calling.”
I disliked that immediately.
The second problem came when Griffin asked about the retainer.
“Mr. Laugherty already took care of it.”
Griffin and I objected simultaneously.
Dex, who had been sitting beside Micah, said, “Pretty sure that’s why he didn’t ask.”
Unfortunately, he was correct.
The attorney was absurdly expensive.
She charged more per hour than any of us make in a day.
She also heard five-person polycule and responded with, “All right. Tell me what you want protected,” rather than asking questions that had nothing to do with the law.
Worth the money.
Even if it was not technically ours.
The process since then has taken weeks.
Drafts. Revisions. Questions. More revisions.
Griffin focused heavily on medical access and the house. Micah caught inconsistencies in language the rest of us skimmed past. Cami cared most about making sure nobody could be excluded from information in an emergency.
Dex read everything.
Eventually.
Tonight is not about deciding anything.
It is about making the decisions executable.
The notary verifies identities while I make sure everyone has the correct folders.
Cami’s medical decision-maker is Griffin, with me as successor.
Griffin’s is Cami, then me.
Dex chose Micah first and Griffin second.
Micah chose Dex, then me.
I chose Micah, with Griffin as successor.
When the attorney asked Dex why he wanted Griffin rather than me as his backup, Dex answered before anyone could stop him.
“Ronan’s a better daddy. Griffin’s a better dad.”
I am still irritated by that sentence.
Not because I disagree with the practical conclusion.
Because there were at least six less objectionable ways to express it.
Griffin laughed for almost a full minute.
The rest of the documents are broader.
Authorizations so the appropriate people can receive medical information.
Advance directives.
Wills.
Beneficiary changes.
Instructions concerning the house and enough protection that nobody loses their home because the person whose name appears on one piece of paper dies before everyone else.
Financial contingencies.
Emergency access.
Plans for what happens if Dex is out of state when something happens, or Griffin is on shift, or Cami is unable to speak for herself.
None of it is romantic.
Except that it is.
The ICU taught us that love has very little authority in a hospital unless somebody has documented what it is allowed to do.
I do not intend to learn that lesson twice.
We sign.
The process is less dramatic than the months of discussion that produced it.
Cami signs her name and immediately asks whether she is supposed to use her married name on one of the forms.
Griffin answers before the notary does.
Dex signs with an unnecessarily elaborate flourish.
Micah tells him this is not an autograph.
“It could be someday.”
“It is a legal document.”
“Dream bigger.”
The witness laughs.
I do not.
Mostly.
By the time we finish, the table is covered in completed pages and the empty tabs that once marked signature lines.
The signing service takes what the attorney needs returned. We keep the designated copies.
The final organization has already been decided because I was not willing to finish this process and then discover nobody knew where anything was.
A full set goes into the fire safe.
Encrypted copies will go into shared storage.
Everyone has the emergency documents they may need accessible from their phones.
The attorney retains the rest.
Dex looks at the stack.
“I have signed more paperwork for this relationship than I did buying my car.”
“You financed your car online in twelve minutes.”
“Exactly. Efficient system.”
Griffin slides one folder toward Cami.
“You know, when we got married, I thought that was a lot of paperwork.”
She smiles at him.
“We were amateurs.”
That gets everyone laughing.
I look around the table while it happens.
The same table where we have played campaign after campaign.
Where we defined primaries.
Where people have cried.
Where Dex has spilled beer on my notes twice despite insisting the second incident was not technically his fault.
There are five folders in front of us now.
Some of the relationships represented here have marriage certificates.
Some do not.
The paperwork does not make Micah my family.
It does not make Dex Griffin’s.
It does not make Cami more connected to me than she was this morning.
Love did all of that long before an attorney became involved.
What the paperwork does is make it harder for a hospital, a bank, a court, or a stranger with a clipboard to pretend otherwise.
I can live with that.