I adopted my best friend’s daughter after her sudden death. When she turned 18, she told me, “YOU HAVE TO PACK YOUR BAGS!” I spent my childhood in an orphanage. No parents, no family, no one to recognize me. My best friend, Lila, had the same story.

Silhouette of two women and a little girl watching the sunset from a bench | Source
: Midjourney

Miranda used to call me “Aunt Anna” and would come and sit on my lap during movie nights. She would fall asleep on my shoulder, drooling on my shirt, and I would carry her to her bed, thinking that maybe this was happiness.

Then that fateful day arrived.

Lila was driving to work when a delivery truck ran a red light. The impact killed her instantly. The police officer who told me the news said, “She didn’t suffer,” as if that could console me.

Miranda was five years old. She kept asking when her mother was going to come back.

“He won’t come back, my darling,” he would tell her, and she would ask the question again twenty minutes later.