“You have everything you need?” Samuel asked.

“I have her,” I said.

We reached the ground floor, and the doors opened to the lobby.

The annex was a quiet, carpeted suite of offices at the back of the building.

A social worker named Sarah was waiting for me near a small play area with plastic chairs and a toy box.

Sitting on the floor, stacking wooden blocks into a crooked tower, was a five-year-old girl with dark curly hair and my mother’s gray eyes.

She looked up as the door clicked open.

She didn’t know me, not yet.

To her, I was a stranger who had appeared in her life on a snowy Tuesday.

But she looked at me with a quiet, curious intensity that made my chest ache.

“Chloe,” the social worker said softly.

“This is Claire.”

“She’s going to take you home now.”

Chloe dropped a blue block, and it clattered against the carpet.

She stood up, wiping her dusty hands on her red corduroy overalls.

She had a small yellow backpack zipped tight, sitting on the chair behind her.