“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.
