A few days later, the director summoned me to her office.
“Elena,” she said with a smile that was too bright, “a family wants to adopt you. That’s wonderful news.”
“And Mia?” I asked.
Her smile faded slightly.
“They’re not ready for two children. She’s still young. Another family will adopt her. You’ll see each other again someday.”
“I won’t go,” I said. “Not without her.”
“You have no choice,” she replied gently. “You must be brave.”
This word — courageous — meant to do as you are told.
The day they took me away, Mia wrapped herself around my waist and shouted,
“Don’t go, Lena! Please! I’ll be good, I promise!”
I was holding her so tightly in my arms that a staff member had to pull her away from me.
“I will find you,” I whispered repeatedly. “I promise.”
She kept calling me by my name while they were helping me into the car.
That sound stayed with me for decades.
My adoptive family lived in another state. They weren’t cruel. They gave me food, clothes, and my own bed. They said I was lucky.
They also hated talking about my past.
“You don’t need to think about the orphanage anymore,” my adoptive mother told me. “Now, we are your family.”
So I learned not to mention Mia out loud anymore.
But in my mind, she never disappeared.
At eighteen, I returned to the orphanage. New team. New children. Still the same dilapidated walls.
I gave them my old name, my new name, my sister’s name. A woman returned with a thin file.
“She was adopted shortly after you,” she said. “Her name has been changed. Her file is classified as confidential.”
I tried again years later. Same answer.
Case closed. No details.
Life went on. I studied, worked, got married too young, got divorced, moved, got a promotion. From the outside, I looked like a normal adult woman, leading a stable and somewhat monotonous life.
