“You’ve been cherished for a very long time,” I whispered. I had no idea how true those words were.

By the ninth day, Ava reached for me every time I walked into the room. If I disappeared into the kitchen, she’d twist herself around until she found me again, and the instant our eyes met, she’d beam.

It frightened me how much that smile meant. Years earlier, I’d promised myself I would never love another child deeply enough to lose them. Now that promise was quietly slipping away — one bottle, one bedtime, one sleepy grin at a time.

On the tenth day, I opened the hall closet looking for an extra blanket. Instead I found an old storage box with a name written on the lid in my own handwriting.

Inside were children’s books about weather, a pair of small rain boots, and a crayon drawing of a cloud with its proper name printed underneath in careful, effortful letters.

None of it was hers. That was the whole trouble with it.