“And Mia?” I asked.

Her smile faltered just slightly.
“They’re not ready for two children. She’s still young. Another family will come for her. You’ll see each other someday.”

“I won’t go,” I said. “Not without her.”

“You don’t have a choice,” she replied gently. “You have to be brave.”

That word—brave—meant do as you’re told.

The day they took me away, Mia wrapped herself around my waist and screamed.
“Don’t go, Lena! Please! I’ll behave, I promise!”

I held her so tightly that a staff member had to pry her from my arms.

“I’ll find you,” I kept whispering. “I promise.”

She was still calling my name as they put me in 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 called me lucky.

They also hated talking about my past.

“You don’t need to think about the orphanage anymore,” my adoptive mother would say. “Now we’re your family.”

So I learned to stop mentioning Mia out loud.

But in my mind, she never disappeared.

When I turned eighteen, I went back to the orphanage. New staff. New children. Same peeling walls.

I gave them my old name, my new name, my sister’s name. A woman returned with a thin folder.

“She was adopted shortly after you,” she said. “Her name was changed. Her file is sealed.”

I tried again years later. Same answer.
Sealed file. No details.

Life went on. I studied, worked, married too young, divorced, moved, got promoted. From the outside, I looked like a normal adult woman with a stable, slightly boring life.