When Claire and Daniel adopt a quiet five-year-old girl, their home finally feels whole. But when the child begins whispering to someone only she can see outside her window, Claire is forced to confront the question no mother ever wants to ask: What if love isn’t enough to keep her daughter safe?
My name is Claire and I’m 35 years old. And let me tell you something about me: for as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to be a mother.
I don’t just mean it in the casual way people mention kids while sipping wine with friends.
It was visceral for me.
I used to pause outside playgrounds like a ghost, one hand resting over my stomach, aching in places no doctor could fix.
For years, my husband Daniel and I tried.
We did everything — from timed cycles and hormone shots to eating only raw and organic food to IVF. At some point, every nurse at the clinic knew my name and blood type.
After our second miscarriage, I stopped saying “next time.” I cried in Target aisles when I passed baby clothes.
I learned how to smile at other people’s gender reveals without falling apart in public.
Eventually, we stopped trying. Not out of defeat — just sheer exhaustion.
Our doctor suggested a break, so we took one.
But the want never left me. It just changed shape.
One evening over dinner, Daniel put his fork down and smiled at me.
“What if we foster while we wait for an adoption match, Claire? We can open our homes and hearts to children who need us.”
And right there, the idea settled into the space between us and grew.
We signed up for classes, did the paperwork, and sat through training sessions that made our heads spin.
We filled out the forms indicating child preference, age range, medical history, and trauma tolerance.
They were questions that didn’t feel like they should belong on paper.
And then, after months of background checks, home visits, and interviews that laid our lives bare, we were approved.
Not long after that, the phone rang.
“Claire, there’s a little girl,” our social worker said gently.
“She’s five. Her name is Sophie.
She lost both parents in a plane crash six months ago. There’s no extended family, and no one is coming forward.”
I don’t remember much after that — just a strange stillness, like everything around me had fallen away.
Before I could think, before Daniel could even speak, I said the word that had lived in my heart for years.
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
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