When Carly finally stood in front of the rusty trailer outside St. Louis, she wasn’t just searching for her mother; she was searching for proof that she hadn’t been thrown away. The woman at the door gave her none. No apology, no secret story of regret—only a blunt confession that a new man had mattered more than a five-year-old girl. Carly walked away carrying a truth heavier than any lie she’d imagined.
Returning to the orphanage, she hoped at least to find Peter, the boy with the failing heart who had once been her whole world. Instead, she learned he’d died weeks after she left. Collapsing in the garden, she whispered his name into the emptiness—until a single yellow leaf, shaped like one of his paper planes, floated into her lap. In that fragile sign, she finally understood: some love doesn’t abandon or disappear. It stays, quietly holding you together when everything else falls apart.
