The Woman Who Waited in the Cold

When my son told me there was “no longer space for his mother,” the words slid out of his mouth with the calm, clipped efficiency of someone who had rehearsed them. No shouting. No slammed doors. No dramatic confrontation that might have at least felt honest in its cruelty. Just a suitcase—my suitcase, packed by his wife while I was at the grocery store—nudged toward the threshold of his spotless suburban house off the freeway, and a soft, practiced smile that made the cruelty somehow sharper than any screaming could have been.

“We need our space, Mom. Claire and I are starting a family. We need to focus on our future. You understand.”

I understood that I’d spent the last three years living in their guest room, contributing to groceries, helping with housework, staying out of their way as much as one person can stay out of the way in someone else’s home. I understood that I’d become inconvenient. That whatever gratitude they’d felt when I first moved in—after I lost my apartment, after my savings ran out—had long since evaporated.

But understanding doesn’t make it hurt less.

So I took my suitcase, nodded with what dignity I could scrape together, and walked down their pristine driveway to the rideshare I’d called with shaking hands. By that night, it was just me, a worn duffel bag, and a driver who made awkward small talk as we headed into the heart of downtown Portland.

I was sixty-two years old, essentially homeless, and completely alone.

Starting Over at Sixty-Two

My name is Catherine Walker. Kate to anyone who cared enough to use a nickname, though these days, not many people did.

I hadn’t planned to end up here. No one does. Life is a series of small failures and unlucky breaks that compound until suddenly you’re sixty-two, standing on a street corner with everything you own, wondering how this became your reality.

My husband left when I was fifty-three. No particular drama—he just stopped loving me somewhere along the way and found someone who made him feel young again. The divorce was civil, but expensive. Legal fees, the division of assets, starting over in a smaller apartment alone.

Then my mother got sick. Dementia, slow and cruel, eating away at the woman who’d raised me until she was a stranger who sometimes recognized my face but never my name. I spent six years caring for her, watching my savings dwindle as I paid for memory care facilities and medical expenses insurance wouldn’t cover.

When she finally passed, I was emotionally exhausted and financially ruined. I’d lost my job—couldn’t maintain full-time work while managing her care. At fifty-nine, with gaps in my employment history, I couldn’t find anything that paid enough to cover rent in a city where housing costs had skyrocketed.

My son Marcus offered his guest room. “Just temporarily, Mom. Until you get back on your feet.”

I stayed three years. Tried to get back on my feet. Sent out hundreds of job applications. Got a handful of interviews. No offers. Age discrimination is illegal, but it’s also invisible—they never tell you that you’re too old, they just hire someone younger.

Marcus and Claire tolerated me at first. Then they resented me. Then they wanted me gone.

And now I was here, standing in front of a boarding house that smelled like mildew and old cigarette smoke, handing over the last of my money for a tiny room with a shared bathroom and a door that didn’t quite close right.

The woman at the desk—sixty-something herself, with suspicious eyes and a permanent scowl—took my cash without comment.

“Rent’s due first of every month. No exceptions. No guests. No noise after ten. You miss rent, you’re out same day.”

“I understand.”

She handed me a key attached to a plastic tag with “7” written in faded marker.

Room seven. Third floor. A mattress that sagged, a window that looked out at a brick wall, a radiator that clanked but produced minimal heat.

Home.

I sat on the edge of the bed and allowed myself exactly five minutes to cry. Then I dried my face, unpacked my duffel bag into the small dresser that smelled like mothballs, and went looking for work.

The Diner

The job I found was at a little diner called Bernie’s, tucked beneath a buzzing neon sign that only half-worked—the “B” and the apostrophe had been dark for years, so it read “ernies” in crooked red letters. It sat on a quiet street near the line of city buses that rolled in every gray Portland morning, carrying workers and insomniacs and people like me who’d learned to be grateful for whatever came.

Bernie himself was seventy-four, gruff but fundamentally kind, running the place because retirement bored him and his late wife had loved this diner. He hired me on the spot after a five-minute conversation.

“You worked food service before?”

“Thirty years ago. Waitressed through my twenties.”

“Can you work graveyard shift? Midnight to six a.m.?”

“Yes.”

“You’re hired. Seven-fifty an hour plus whatever tips you can squeeze out of the night crowd. Cash at the end of every shift.”

It wasn’t much. It wasn’t even minimum wage, technically, but Bernie operated in that gray area of small businesses that somehow still existed outside normal employment law. And I needed money immediately, so I took it.

The graveyard shift suited me. I worked midnight to sunrise, standing at the grill while truckers, EMTs, sex workers taking breaks, and restless night owls drifted in and out. The fridge hummed behind me, its American-flag magnet curling at the edges—a relic from some past patriotic holiday. The tiny TV in the corner murmured headlines to nobody in particular. The coffee was terrible but free, and Bernie let me take home day-old pastries that would otherwise go to waste.

I went home smelling of coffee and fried eggs and the particular staleness of places that never fully close. But the pay, combined with tips, covered my cramped room and a few groceries. It was enough.

Barely, but enough.

And for the first time in months, I felt something close to stability. Not happiness. Not hope, exactly. But the absence of immediate panic. The ability to plan a week ahead instead of just a day.

That’s when I began seeing her.

The Woman at the Bus Stop

Every night, she was there.

She sat at the corner near the bus stop, right along my walk home from the diner. Bundled in a coat far too thin for the damp Oregon cold that settled into your bones and wouldn’t leave. A cardboard cup rested by her feet, a scatter of crumpled bills and coins inside—never much, just enough to show that people occasionally noticed her.

Her hair was a tangled halo of white, like she’d stopped caring about appearances years ago. Her hands shook—whether from cold, age, or something else, I couldn’t tell. But her eyes… her eyes were different.

They were an icy, almost luminous blue. Startlingly clear. When she looked up at passersby, her gaze was sharp and aware in a way that didn’t match the defeated slump of her shoulders.

The first time I really saw her—really looked at her instead of past her the way most people do with the homeless—she was watching me approach with an intensity that made me pause.

I slipped two dollars into her cup. Not much, but a decent portion of my night’s tips.

She looked up at me with that piercing gaze, studying my face with an expression I couldn’t quite read. Then she nodded once, slowly, deliberately, as if she’d confirmed something she’d been wondering about.

“Thank you,” she said. Her voice was raspy but surprisingly strong.

“You’re welcome. Stay warm.”

I walked away feeling like I’d been assessed and measured in ways I didn’t understand.

After that, it became habit.

I finished my shift around five or five-thirty in the morning—depending on whether the last stragglers lingered over coffee—stepped into the wet, predawn air, and made my way along the cracked sidewalk toward my boarding house. And every morning, there she was. Same corner. Same too-thin coat. Same luminous blue eyes.

Some mornings I left change. Other mornings, half a muffin wrapped neatly in a napkin, or a banana I’d been planning to eat later, or the sandwich Bernie had made me but I was too tired to finish. We didn’t exchange more than a few words—just a soft “thank you,” a nod, sometimes a comment about the weather.

But even small rituals make lonely lives feel less empty.

I found myself looking forward to that brief exchange. Proof that someone saw me, even if it was only another person society had rendered invisible.

Still… something about her didn’t quite fit.

The Things That Didn’t Add Up

It started with small observations. The kind of details you notice when you’re paying attention, when your own loneliness makes you hyperaware of other people’s patterns.

She somehow always knew the exact minute I’d walk by.

I worked graveyard shifts, yes, but my end time varied by fifteen to thirty minutes depending on how busy we’d been, how long cleanup took, whether Bernie wanted to chat before I left. There was no way to predict when exactly I’d come walking down that street.

And yet, she was always in position. Always settled in her spot, cup placed just so, ready for my arrival. Never packing up her things like she’d been there all night. Never in the process of settling in like she’d just arrived. Just… ready.

Like she was waiting specifically for me.

She rarely watched the people dropping change into her cup. Most homeless folks I’d encountered over the years made eye contact, thanked people directly, engaged in the small performance of gratitude that might encourage more donations. But she didn’t. Her eyes stayed fixed on the street, scanning, like she was waiting for something specific to appear.

And she had questions. Subtle ones, woven into our brief exchanges.

“Where are you headed?”

“Just home.”

“Where’s home?”

I told her without thinking—gave her the address of the boarding house. And then she repeated it under her breath, softly, as if committing it to memory.

“That’s the old Bellmont building, isn’t it? Third floor?”

“How did you—”

“Used to know that area. Long time ago.”

But something about the way she said it felt wrong. Not reminiscent. Strategic.

Once, she asked how long I’d been working at Bernie’s. Another time, she asked if I had family in Portland. Each question felt innocuous in isolation, but together they formed a pattern. Like she was gathering information. Building a picture of my life.

Around the same time, the boarding house began to feel wrong.

I’d hear footsteps stall right outside my door in the dark. Not walking past—stopping. Standing there. Then moving away after a minute or two.

The hallway light flicked on and off at odd hours. I’d wake at 3 a.m. to see light seeping under my door, then darkness again, then light. Like someone was testing the switch or pacing the hallway.

Items in my room were slightly moved. A book I’d left on the nightstand would be on the dresser. My jacket would be hung on a different hook. Small enough changes that I couldn’t be certain, but consistent enough that I couldn’t ignore.

One night when I returned earlier than usual—Bernie had been slow, sent me home at four instead of five-thirty—I was almost certain I saw a familiar, hunched silhouette at the end of the block. Standing under the broken streetlight, partially obscured by shadow, watching my building.

When I looked directly, the figure turned away. But the coat, the posture, the white hair catching what little light there was…

I told myself I was imagining it. That exhaustion blurs the edges of reality. That two months of graveyard shifts had scrambled my ability to distinguish actual events from paranoid fantasy.

But I started sleeping with a chair propped against my door. Started taking different routes home sometimes. Started wondering if kindness to a stranger had somehow invited something dangerous into my life.

The Night Everything Shifted

It was late February. A thin rain was falling, the kind that makes the sidewalks shimmer under the streetlights and soaks through clothes without you realizing until you’re already wet. My back ached from six hours of standing over the grill. My pockets held a paycheck—actual paper, because Bernie didn’t believe in direct deposit—and seventeen dollars in tips.

My mind was set on nothing more than sleep. Maybe a hot shower if the boarding house’s water heater was cooperating. Maybe not even that. Just sleep.

She was in her usual spot, shoulders curled inward against the cold, that too-thin coat darker with rain. The cardboard cup at her feet was nearly empty—bad night for donations, apparently.

I dropped a few dollars into it. My usual ritual. Small kindness between two people society had decided didn’t matter much.

But instead of nodding, instead of the usual quiet “thank you,” she reached out.

Her hand clamped around my wrist.

The grip was unexpected. Strong. Deliberate. Her skin was cold, but the strength was undeniable—this wasn’t the weak grasp of a frail elderly woman. This was purposeful.

She drew my hand close to her chest and held it there, and when our eyes met, I realized how fully awake she was. Alert in a way that had nothing to do with frailty. Clear in a way that contradicted every assumption I’d made about her.

“My child,” she murmured.

The words hit me strangely. Not “dear” or “honey” or the generic terms homeless folks sometimes used. My child. Specific. Intimate. Wrong.

Her voice was different too. Suddenly smooth, confident—nothing like the timid whisper she used with other passersby. This voice had authority. Control.

“You have been kind when others walked past without seeing me. You have shared what little you have. You have treated me like I was human when most people look through me like I’m glass.”

I tried to pull my hand back. Her grip tightened.

“Tomorrow morning,” she said, her eyes gleaming strangely in the streetlight, “you will not return to the place where you sleep. You will meet me here instead. Six a.m. Before the city wakes. Before the buses run.”

“I don’t—”

“I’m ready to tell you the truth.” Her thumb pressed against my wrist, found my pulse, held there like she was measuring something. “One you should have known a long, long time ago.”

She released my hand. I stumbled backward, my wrist aching where she’d gripped it.

“Six a.m.,” she repeated. “Don’t be late, Catherine.”

She knew my name. I’d never told her my name.

I walked home faster than usual, my heart hammering, my mind spinning. Stopped at the corner to look back. She was still there, sitting peacefully, but her head was turned toward me, watching me go.

I didn’t sleep that night. Lay in my sagging bed with the chair still propped against the door, playing that conversation over and over. Trying to make sense of it.

She knew my name. She’d been gathering information about me for weeks. She’d possibly been following me, watching my building, learning my patterns.

None of this was random kindness between strangers. This was something else.

But what? What truth could a homeless woman possibly have that I “should have known a long, long time ago”?

The Meeting

I didn’t go at six a.m.

I went at five-thirty, approaching from a different direction, staying in the shadows, wanting to see her before she saw me.

She was already there. Not sitting in her usual slumped position, but standing. Pacing. Checking a watch—an actual watch, nice-looking, not something you’d expect a homeless woman to have.

And her coat was different. Still old, still worn, but cleaner than usual. Her hair was pulled back. She looked… prepared. Like this was an appointment. A planned event.

I stepped out of the shadows. “I’m here.”

She turned, and something in her expression shifted. Relief? Satisfaction? I couldn’t tell.

“Catherine. Thank you for coming.”

“You know my name. You’ve been following me. You’ve been watching my building. You want to explain any of that before we go further?”

She smiled. Not the timid, grateful smile she showed other people. A real smile. Sad, but genuine.

“I haven’t been homeless for thirty years, Catherine. I’ve been looking for you for thirty years.”

The world tilted slightly. “What?”

“My name is Margaret Chen. And thirty-two years ago, I gave birth to a daughter at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Portland. I was seventeen. Unmarried. My family was…” She paused. “Traditional. Unforgiving. They gave me two choices: abortion or adoption. I chose adoption because I thought she’d have a better life.”

My throat tightened. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Because that daughter was you, Catherine. You were adopted by Thomas and Linda Walker three days after you were born. And I’ve been looking for you ever since I was old enough, stable enough, and brave enough to try.”

I shook my head. “That’s not… my parents would have told me…”

“Would they? Did they ever mention adoption?”

I thought back. Childhood memories. Family photos. The way my parents had always been slightly closed off, slightly distant, like they were performing parenthood rather than living it.

The way I’d never quite looked like either of them. The way family medical history was always vague. The way certain questions were deflected or ignored.

“I don’t believe you,” I said, but my voice wavered.

Margaret reached into her coat—not the outer coat, but an inner pocket I hadn’t noticed—and pulled out a manila envelope, worn soft with age.

“Birth certificate. Adoption papers. Hospital records. A letter I wrote to you the day you were born that they never gave you. It’s all here.”

She held the envelope out.

I didn’t take it.

“Why the performance?” I asked. “Why pretend to be homeless? Why not just contact me directly?”

“I tried.” Her voice cracked. “For years, I tried. But the adoption was closed. Your parents moved twice. Changed phone numbers. Made themselves impossible to find. I hired investigators when I could afford it. Followed every lead. And finally, two years ago, I found you.”

“Two years—”

“You were living with your son and his wife. You seemed settled. I watched from a distance, told myself you didn’t need me disrupting your life. Then you lost that housing. Ended up here. Alone. Working graveyard shifts. Struggling.”

She took a breath.

“And I thought maybe… maybe now. Maybe when you’re at your lowest, when you’re alone and scared and working yourself to exhaustion, maybe now you’d want to know that someone has been looking for you your entire life. That you were wanted. That giving you up broke me, and finding you has been the only thing that’s mattered for three decades.”

Tears were streaming down her face now. Real tears. Not performance. Not manipulation.

“I didn’t know how to approach you. I didn’t know if you’d believe me or think I was crazy. So I became someone you’d see every day. Someone you’d get used to. Someone you’d show kindness to, so I could learn what kind of person you’d become. So I could see if you’d inherited my empathy or my stubbornness or any part of me at all.”

She wiped her face with the sleeve of her coat.

“And you did. You inherited the best parts. You’re kind even when you’re struggling. You see people others ignore. You share what little you have. You’re everything I hoped you’d be.”

I stood there, frozen, the envelope still extended between us.

“I don’t know if you want a relationship with me,” Margaret said softly. “I don’t know if I have any right to ask for one after abandoning you as a baby. But I want you to know the truth. I want you to know you were loved. Are loved. Have always been loved by someone who gave you up because she was seventeen and terrified and thought she was doing the right thing.”

She pressed the envelope into my hands.

“Read it. Verify everything. Do a DNA test if you want—I’ll pay for it. Take all the time you need. But know that whatever you decide, I’m here. I’ve been here. I’ll keep being here.”

The Documents

I took the envelope back to my boarding house. Sat on my sagging mattress under the flickering overhead light and read every page.

Birth certificate: Baby girl Chen. Born February 14, 1961, at St. Vincent’s Hospital. Mother: Margaret Chen, age 17. Father: Unknown.

Adoption papers: Baby girl placed with Thomas and Linda Walker, February 17, 1961. Closed adoption. Birth records sealed.

Hospital records: Healthy delivery. Baby weight: 6 lbs 4 oz. No complications.

And the letter. Written in teenage handwriting, on paper yellowed with age:

To my daughter,

I’m seventeen years old and I’ve made a terrible mistake. Not you—you’re perfect. But the situation. Getting pregnant. Disappointing my family. Not being able to give you the life you deserve.

Your father was a boy I met at a party. He doesn’t know about you. My parents say I’ve brought shame on our family. They say adoption is the only way.

I don’t want to give you up. But I love you too much to raise you in anger and shame. I love you too much to trap you in my parents’ house where you’d never be fully accepted.

So I’m giving you to people who desperately want a child. Who have resources and stability. Who will love you the way you deserve.

But I want you to know: I wanted you. I held you for three days before they made me sign the papers. I memorized your face. I counted your fingers and toes. I sang to you every lullaby I knew.

Someday, when you’re old enough, I’m going to find you. I’m going to tell you that giving you up was the hardest thing I ever did. That not a day has passed that I haven’t thought about you.

I love you. I’m sorry. I hope your life is beautiful.

Your mother, Margaret

I read it three times. Then I cried—really cried, for the first time since Marcus had thrown me out. Cried for the teenager who’d given me up. Cried for the parents who’d raised me with duty but never quite with love. Cried for the years of feeling like I didn’t quite belong anywhere.

The Truth About Everything

The DNA test confirmed it. Margaret Chen was my biological mother.

The conversations that followed were difficult, complicated, full of thirty-two years of questions and explanations and grief for the relationship we’d never had.

Margaret wasn’t actually homeless. She had a small apartment across town, worked as a bookkeeper for a nonprofit, lived quietly and carefully. The performance at the bus stop was exactly that—a performance designed to allow her to observe me, to become part of my routine, to figure out how to reveal a truth she’d been carrying for three decades.

“I know it was deceptive,” she said during one of our early meetings at a coffee shop that didn’t smell like grease. “I know it probably feels like manipulation. But I was terrified. Terrified you’d reject me. Terrified you’d hate me for giving you up. Terrified I’d finally found you after all these years and you wouldn’t want anything to do with me.”

“So you pretended to be homeless.”

“So I became someone you’d see every day. Someone you’d show kindness to. Someone who could observe what kind of person you’d become before revealing who I was.”

It should have made me angry. In some ways, it did. But I also understood the fear behind it. The desperation. The years of searching and wondering and carrying guilt.

“Your parents—Thomas and Linda—did they treat you well?”

“They provided for me. They were never cruel. But they were never… warm. I always felt like I was fulfilling a role for them rather than being their actual daughter.”

Margaret nodded sadly. “I’m sorry. I hoped you’d find love with them. That’s what I was promised—that you’d go to a family who desperately wanted a child.”

“They wanted a child in theory. In practice, I think I disappointed them by existing.”

We talked for hours. About her life—the struggle to finish high school while grieving the loss of her baby, the decades of therapy, the failed relationships because she couldn’t commit to anyone while still searching for me. About my life—the distant parents, the failed marriage, the son who’d eventually thrown me out, the long slide into this strange, precarious existence.

“I want to help you,” Margaret said finally. “I have savings. Not a lot, but enough. You could move into a real apartment. You could quit that diner. You could—”

“No.” The word came out sharper than I intended. “I don’t need rescuing. I don’t need a mother who shows up after sixty-two years and tries to fix everything with money.”

She flinched, but nodded. “Then what do you need?”

I thought about it. “I need time. I need to process this. I need to figure out what it means to have a biological mother who’s been watching me from a bus stop for months. I need…”

“Space,” she finished. “You need space. Like your son needed space.”

The parallel hit hard. Both of us, thrown away by people we loved. Both of us, trying to build lives from the rubble.

“I’m not him,” I said quietly. “I’m not going to cut you out completely. But I need to do this at my own pace.”

“Of course. Whatever you need. I’ve waited thirty-two years. I can wait longer.”

Six Months Later

Margaret and I meet for coffee every Sunday morning. It’s become a ritual—not replacing the brief exchanges at the bus stop, but something real. Something chosen.

We’re learning each other slowly. I’m learning about her childhood in a strict Chinese immigrant household, about the shame and secrecy that surrounded her pregnancy, about the years she spent working low-wage jobs while searching for me. She’s learning about my marriage, my mother’s dementia, the slow accumulation of losses that led me to that boarding house.

I’m still working at Bernie’s. Still living in the boarding house. Still building my life one shift at a time.

But it doesn’t feel quite as lonely anymore.

Marcus called once, three months ago. Asked if I was okay. I said yes. He didn’t ask for details, and I didn’t offer them. We haven’t spoken since. Maybe someday we’ll rebuild that relationship. Maybe not. I’m learning that some connections are permanent and some are temporary, and forcing the temporary ones to last only causes pain.

Margaret understands that in a way my adoptive parents never did. She understands that love sometimes means letting go, and that coming back—if it happens—has to be a choice, not an obligation.

“Do you regret it?” I asked her last Sunday. “Giving me up? Would you do it differently if you could go back?”

She thought for a long time before answering. “I regret the circumstances that made it necessary. I regret not being brave enough to keep you despite my family’s anger. I regret the thirty-two years we lost. But…” She reached across the table, took my hand gently—not the desperate grip from that rainy night, but a soft, voluntary connection. “I can’t regret a decision that led you to exist. Even with all the pain, even with all the years of searching, I’d rather live in a world where you exist than one where you don’t.”

I squeezed her hand. “That’s a good answer.”

“It’s the truth.”

We’re not quite mother and daughter. Too many years have passed, too much life has happened without each other. But we’re family. We’re choosing each other, slowly, carefully, building something new from the rubble of what was lost.

The Performance That Saved Us Both

Sometimes I walk past that bus stop on my way home from Bernie’s. The corner is empty now—Margaret stopped her performance once the truth was out. But I remember her there. Hunched in that too-thin coat. Watching the street with those luminous blue eyes. Waiting for me with a patience that spanned decades.

It was manipulation, yes. Deception. A performance designed to bypass my defenses and insert herself into my life.

But it was also an act of desperate love. A woman who’d spent thirty-two years searching, finally finding her daughter broke and alone, and not knowing how to bridge the impossible gap between them.

So she became someone I’d see every day. Someone I’d show kindness to. Someone who could observe me without judgment, could learn who I’d become, could figure out if there was any possibility of connection.

And somehow, impossibly, it worked.

Not because the deception was forgivable, but because underneath it was a truth I’d needed my entire life: that I’d been wanted. That I’d been searched for. That somewhere in the world, someone had spent decades trying to find me.

My adoptive parents never wanted me—not really. My son didn’t want me. My ex-husband didn’t want me. For sixty-two years, I’d moved through the world feeling fundamentally unwanted.

And then a woman who’d given me up as a baby proved that she’d wanted me all along. Had never stopped wanting me. Had performed an elaborate deception just for the chance to be near me.

It shouldn’t work. It shouldn’t be the foundation of a healthy relationship.

But sometimes, love is imperfect and strange and arrives in forms we’d never expect.

Sometimes, the woman shivering at the bus stop is the mother who’s been searching for you your entire life.

Sometimes, the greatest gift is simply being found.

What I’ve Learned

They say blood is thicker than water. But the full saying is “the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb”—meaning chosen relationships are stronger than biological ones.

I think the truth is more complicated.

Margaret gave me life, then gave me away. My adoptive parents raised me, but never quite loved me. My son provided shelter, then took it away. Each relationship a mixture of obligation and choice, love and convenience, connection and distance.

But here, in this small coffee shop on Sunday mornings, Margaret and I are building something new. Something that acknowledges the biology that connects us while also respecting the decades that separated us. Something that’s honest about the pain while making room for possibility.

She doesn’t owe me a relationship, and I don’t owe her one either. We’re choosing each other because we want to, not because blood or law demands it.

And that choice—that deliberate, voluntary decision to build connection despite everything—is more powerful than any obligation could ever be.

I’m sixty-two years old. I work graveyard shifts at a diner. I live in a boarding house that smells like mildew. My son doesn’t call. My ex-husband is remarried. My adoptive parents are dead.

But I have a mother who spent three decades searching for me. Who stood at a bus stop in the cold waiting for me to notice her. Who loved me enough to give me up, and loved me enough to never stop trying to find me again.

That’s not nothing.

That’s everything.

THE END