Like they'd found their way out of the cold and into the light. Amara's hands started shaking. The dish rag fell from her fingers, landing with a soft splash in the bucket of cleaning solution. She walked to the door slowly. Each step felt strange, unsteady, like she was moving through water or a dream.
She unlocked it with trembling fingers and pushed it open. "You too." Her voice came out rough, choked. "What? We came to say goodbye," Eli said. The words hit her like a punch to the chest.
Her heart dropped and soared at the same time. "Dropped because they were leaving. Soared because." "Goodbye." The word came out small, uncertain. Na nodded, her eyes shining with something that looked like joy and sadness mixed together. Our aunt, Mama's sister, her name is Marie.
She found us. She lives in Canada. Amara's hand flew to her mouth. She found you. She saw the picture, Eli said.
His voice was stronger than she remembered. More confident, less afraid. The one from the newspaper from the night of the accident. Amara's breath caught in her throat. That photo, the one the reporter had taken the night everything changed.
The night she'd knelt in the snow and held two strangers like they were hers. The moment captured on film that she'd forgotten about. Dismissed as unimportant, but someone else hadn't forgotten. Someone else had seen it and recognized two small faces and understood what it meant. She's been searching for us since that night.
Na continued, "Her voice was steady now, stronger than it had been weeks ago. She lives in Toronto. She and Mama were really close, but they hadn't talked in years. some kind of fight. Aunt Marie didn’t even know about the accident until she saw that picture in the paper.
She called the newspaper. Eli picked up the story. They wouldn’t give her your name or information about us because of privacy laws. But they told her which police station responded to the accident, which county we'd be in. She's been calling every day, Na added, checking every record, looking through foster system databases.
It took her two months just to find out where we'd been placed initially. And then we kept running away from the foster homes, so it was like chasing ghosts, but she never stopped. Eli said his eyes were bright, not with tears, but with something bigger. Pride, relief, hope. She never gave up.
Just like Mama always said she wouldn’t. Mama used to tell us that Aunt Marie was the stubbornest person in the world. That once she decided something, nothing could change her mind. She came to the shelter last week. Na said, "Mrs.
Chen, the lady who taught me to knit. She'd been keeping track of us, making sure we came back." When Aunt Marie finally tracked us down through the system, Mrs. Chen called her directly. "Amara felt tears gathering at the corners of her eyes. She blinked rapidly, trying to hold them back, but it was useless.