People told me I was out of my mind for fighting for those kids in court. Even my brother said loving them was one thing, but raising ten children alone was something else entirely. Maybe he was right. But I couldn’t let them lose the only parent figure they had left. So I learned how to do everything myself—braiding hair, cutting boys’ hair, rotating lunch duty, keeping track of inhalers, and figuring out which child needed quiet and which one needed grilled cheese cut into stars. I didn’t replace Calla. I just stayed.
That morning, while I was packing lunches, Mara asked if we could talk that night.
There was something in the way she said it that stayed with me all day. After homework, baths, and the usual bedtime routine, she found me in the laundry room and told me it was about her mother. Then she said something that changed everything. She told me that not everything she had said back then was true. She hadn’t forgotten. She had remembered the whole time.
