“Yes, you do.”
“I do not want to leave them.”
“That is different.”
The truth of it stings.
He guides me a few steps away from the porch, toward the edge of the yard where the maple leaves have gathered in wet red and gold piles. He keeps his hand against my back, but he does not steer me anywhere I do not choose to go.
“I know what this feels like,” he says.
I look at him sharply. “Do you?”
His jaw tightens.
“Yes.”
The answer comes without defense.
I remember Dolores in the kitchen. I remember the story of a little boy pulled away from his mother and taken into a house wherein love became weakness, and obedience became survival.
My anger softens before I can stop it.
“This is not the same,” I say.
“No.” His eyes hold mine. “They are being given a home. I was taken from one.”
I look back at the house.
Erin is visible through the upstairs window now, waving something bright and purple. Alex stands behind her with both hands raised in surrender, as if she has already won an argument I cannot hear.
Heath appears next to her a second later. When he sees me looking, he presses his hand against the window.
My throat closes.
“You are still their family,” Stefano says.
“I am their aunt.”
“You are the woman who went into hell for them.”
“That doesn’t make me their mother.”
“No.” His voice turns gentler. “It makes you their family, the one person who will be there for them always.”
I look down at the ring on my hand. Dark stone. Sharp light. A promise I am still learning to believe in.
“I am scared they will think I left,” I whisper. I am scared that loving them is not enough to hold onto them. “That this change will sound like abandonment, no matter how many times we explain it.”
Stefano’s hand moves from my back to my cheek.
“Then you keep coming back.”
Simple.
Not easy.
But simple.
