I stepped inside and felt time split. The room was crowded, but not with us: boxes marked with someone else’s name, tiny dresses folded with unfamiliar tenderness, a pink raincoat waiting for storms I didn’t know. I stood there, soaked and speechless, until a small girl peered out from behind the couch, clutching a worn teddy like a shield. Her eyes met mine with a question I didn’t know how to answer. Amelia’s voice, once sharp from our last fight, turned gentle as she said the word “Lily,” like it was both a beginning and an apology.

At the kitchen table, under the hum of a tired light, Amelia finally told me the truth. She hadn’t cut me off to hurt me; she had stepped back to breathe, to stop living as my lifeboat. Becoming a foster parent wasn’t her escape—it was her reclamation. As she buttered toast for Lily, steady and unhurried, I saw the same love that had dragged me through our shared darkness now lighting a softer path for someone smaller. I wasn’t being abandoned; I was being trusted to stand. Love, I realized, doesn’t close the door when it changes shape. It stretches, reshapes, and somehow holds more than it did before.