Our dining room table looks like a crime scene.
Laptops open. Notes everywhere.
Donor profiles scattered, half-highlighted, half-ignored.
This is what building a family looks like now.
Papers spread out like tarot cards, each one holding a different future.
In Miami, we had a bigger table.
Solid wood, hand-picked from Little Havana, where the old man who sold it to us spoke only Spanish and insisted on blessing it with holy water before we could take it home.
Kevin's grandmother's lace runner down the center—three generations of Sunday dinners embedded in its threads.
Here, it's IKEA.
Functional. Temporary.
Like everything else in our exile.
Kevin scrolls while I sift through paper.
We've been at this for hours.
Outside, the California sky's gone hazy with that particular light that means evening is coming whether you're ready or not.
Inside, it's just the hum of focus.
The quiet sound of choices we could never have made in Florida.
"Alright," I say. "Top three. One more time."
Kevin pulls up the shortlist.
He knows it by heart like a prayer, like something you memorize because forgetting means losing everything.
"Donor 1092: 27, Cuban American, brown eyes, dark hair, bio degree."
"Donor 1458: 24, Irish American, redhead, art history student."
"Donor 1375: 29, African American, pursuing PhD in psych."
He leans back. "How the hell do you choose the genetic blueprint for your kid?"
I reach across the table.
Thread my fingers into his like we're weaving something together.
"Health first. Then education. Then everything else."
"I know," he says. "But this isn't just paperwork. This is half of our kid."
I don't answer right away.
Because yeah—it freaks me out too.
But there's something else underneath.
Relief that tastes like the first sip of café cubano after a long night, bitter and sweet and necessary.
That we get to make this choice at all.
"Back in Miami," I say slowly, "I used to imagine this moment. Before the law changed. I thought we'd be doing this in our old dining room, with the sound of Celia Cruz playing from Mrs. García's radio next door, and you complaining about how strong I made the coffee."
Kevin's eyes soften like they do when I mention the life we left behind.
"Miss it?"
"The sounds, yeah. The feeling of being home." I pause. "But not the fear. Not looking over our shoulder, wondering when they'd take this away."
He nods. Gets it without me having to explain. How you can mourn a place that rejected you. How displacement lives in your chest like a bird that can't find its way back to the nest, always circling but never landing.
"My family's trying, you know? But this part... choosing a donor who doesn't look like she could be related to us?" He trails off.
"I don't know how they're going to react."
I squeeze his hand. "We're not doing this for them."
"I know," he says. "It's just complicated."
Tell me about it. I haven't even told my parents yet. My silence feels like a living thing sitting next to us at the table, heavy as my grandmother's iron pot, the one she used to make black beans that could feed half the neighborhood, the one that made everything taste like home.
His fear of judgment. My fear of absence. Different shapes, same weight. But at least here, our choices are ours to make without apology, without looking over our shoulders.
"So," I say. "Let's focus on what we can control. What we came here for."
We dive in again. Side by side, flipping through genetic screening results. Medical history charts. Donor essays written in careful, hopeful language by women who understand they're offering pieces of themselves to strangers.
The glow of our screens softens the harsh overhead light. So does the silence, which has shifted from anxious to contemplative, like the quiet that comes after a storm has passed. After another hour, we're down to two. Donor 1092. Donor 1375. Kevin looks over the profiles again.
"1092's background is closer to yours. Cuban American, brown eyes, dark hair. It might make things easier. Help our kid fit in, especially if we end up moving again." I hear what he's saying.
And what he's not. He's thinking about appearances, about walking through the world with a child who gets read as ours without question.
But he's also thinking about something else. The possibility that this safe harbor might not be permanent. That we might have to run again, like my grandparents did from Cuba, like so many families do when the ground shifts beneath their feet and home becomes a memory. Fear I carry too. Don't say out loud. That other states might follow Florida's lead.
That this refuge could become another trap. That our child might inherit our restlessness, our need to always have an escape plan, our inability to ever fully believe in permanent safety.
"I get it," I say. "But 1375... her academic background is incredible. Psych eval? Rock solid."
He nods. Says nothing. "Kev," I say gently. "You don't have to pick what's 'safe.' You can pick what feels right."
The clock on the wall ticks. Two profiles in front of us. Two possible futures. No perfect answer---just the one we can live with, love forward. The one that honors why we left everything behind.
I reach for his hand again.
"So... which one feels like us?" Kevin stares at the profiles. Long moment. Then looks back at 1092.
"Cuban American. Your background. If our kid looks like they could be yours... maybe that's not about fear. Maybe that's about connection. About keeping something alive that your family tried to kill."
I look at the profile again. Think about my parents. The silence between us that stretches across state lines like a scar that won't heal. The culture I want to pass down even if they'll never meet their grandchild.
The Spanish lullabies my grandmother sang, the way she made sofrito with her hands instead of measuring cups, never writing anything down because she said the recipes lived in her fingertips.
The stories about old Havana that she carried like treasures, polishing them with each telling until they gleamed.
"Yeah," I say, my voice catching. "Maybe it is about connection."
We sit back. Decision made. Outside, California keeps humming along, indifferent to our small revolution.
Inside, we're building something that would have been impossible in the place we called home. Something worth running toward. Something worth starting over for. Something worth crossing a continent to protect.
The profiles of the others go back in the folder. 1092 stays on the table. Our choice. Our future. Made in a state where choosing is still legal, where love doesn't require permission, where families like ours don't have to hide.