I walked into her apartment ready to face the wreckage I’d imagined: walls papered with our childhood, a museum of the years she’d spent keeping me alive. Instead, I found a life in motion. Boxes of baby clothes, a stroller half-assembled, school flyers on the fridge. A little girl watched me with wide, measuring eyes, the same kind of fear I used to carry like a second spine.

Amelia told me, quietly, that fostering wasn’t a replacement for me; it was an answer to a question she’d been asking her whole life: who am I when I’m not saving you? She had poured her future into my survival until there was nothing left that belonged only to her. Standing in that cluttered, hopeful room, I realized love isn’t a debt to settle. It’s something that can be replanted, even in the soil of old hurt, and still grow new.