My name is Elena, and when I was eight years old, I made my little sister a promise I didn’t yet understand.
“I’ll find you,” I told her. “No matter what.”
For the next thirty-two years, I believed I never would.
Mia and I grew up in an orphanage where everything felt temporary except the loneliness. The walls were scuffed, the lights too bright, and the beds lined up like childhood had been standardized. We didn’t have bedtime stories about parents or framed photos to wonder about. We had thin files and reminders to be grateful.
But we had each other.
Mia was always at my side—my shadow, my responsibility, my reason to stay strong. I learned how to braid her hair with my fingers, how to save food for later, how to read adults well enough to know when silence was safer than asking for kindness. We didn’t dream big. We dreamed simple.
We just wanted to leave together.
Then a couple arrived.
They smiled too easily, asked polite questions, and lingered where Mia and I sat reading on the floor. Days later, I was called into the director’s office and told I’d been chosen. Adopted. Lucky.
“What about my sister?” I asked.
“They’re not taking two,” she said gently, firmly. “You’ll see her again someday.”
“I won’t go without her.”
“You don’t get to decide,” she replied. “Be brave.”
Brave meant obedient.
On the day I left, Mia screamed my name until someone pulled her from my arms. I whispered the only thing I could promise.
“I’ll find you.”
Her cries followed me out the door and stayed with me long after.
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