And it had quietly rewritten hundreds of lives while I wasn’t looking.
I was standing near the front, holding Mia and Ava’s hands, when I heard it.
A voice I hadn’t heard in twenty-seven years, pitched to carry.
“Excuse me, we’re family. The Reyes family. Elena is our daughter.”
My mother.
Older, thinner, but unmistakable, sweeping into that glass atrium in a camel coat with a cream designer handbag on her arm, my father trailing behind her.
The same kind of bag she’d been clutching the day she told me I’d ruined everything.
They crossed the room toward me, faces arranged into something that was trying very hard to be warmth.
“Sweetheart,” my mother said, reaching for me. “Look at you. We’ve thought about you every single day.”
The room had gone quiet.
Hundreds of people Samuel had rescued, all watching this.
“We know we made mistakes,” my father said, in a low, practiced voice. “We were young. We were scared. But family is family. Blood is blood. And now, with everything that’s happened, we think it’s time we were a part of your life again. And the girls’ lives.”
