“But she’s my daughter …” Mrs Johnson started to weep. “She’s got to know that God loves her. No, I won’t give up on her, Robert. I can’t do that.”

In the closet, memories nagged at Aria. In the dark, she could see the sorrel-colored brick of the Eccles Children’s Home like it was yesterday. She had been there longer than at any other group home. She remembered the way the bleak linoleum hallway shone. The air of tragedy that hung in the place, only slightly more pungent than the smell of industrial cleaner. A dormitory of rooms with bunk beds, four children per room. The new ones crying at night, but no one there to comfort them. The emotional deprivation so thick you could breathe it in. There was nowhere for all the torment to go, so the children aimed it at each other. You couldn’t get attached to anyone, because there was no knowing when they were going to be placed in a foster home and leave you. It was anything but a “home,” it was just a place where she was forced to fall asleep at night.

She couldn’t go back to that place.

The torment of the idea of being returned to the group home compelled her to move from her place in the closet. She walked from one end of the room to the other in a frightened daze. She was breathing heavily. She decided to confront the Johnsons about their decision but when she walked down the hallway to their room, she could see through the crack below the door that the light in their room was out. They had already gone to sleep.

Time stood still again, just as it had that day 10 years ago when they had walked her to the school office to tell her that her mother was in the hospital. Again, as she walked down the hallway of the house she had thought would be her home, it felt like she was walking in slow motion. Aria went back to her room and lay under the covers of her bed. Her tears had given way to an unnerved numbness. It was not a conscious decision. The decision came from the deep recesses of her soul, a soul that could not bear the idea of being abandoned again. The decision was clear. She had to leave this place. She had to run away.