CHAPTER THREE ATHENA’S POV

“Dear, we won’t harm you. We just want to ask some questions.” Mrs. Sophia said it gently, the kind of gentle that came from having said it to a hundred kids before me in exactly this position.

I nodded and she continued, pulling her chair a few inches closer.

“First, I want to express my deep condolences for your parents’ death. You’re young, and we know this can be a huge turn in your life.”

I bowed my head, fighting back tears at the reminder that I was an orphan now — a word that hadn’t fully landed until she said it out loud like it was just a category I belonged to, a box to check on a form.

“It’s alright,” she said, her voice calm, trying to soothe me, one hand hovering near my shoulder without quite touching it.

“We’re social workers, and we’ll help you find a new family — depending on what you tell me now.” She pulled out her tablet, the screen glowing to life with a form already half-filled with my name.

“Do you remember any family members? Did your parents ever introduce you to anyone as family?” she asked, tapping away, not looking up.

I thought hard, the pressure of the question settling on my chest. My future probably depended on the answer, and I hated how much that felt true.

All I could remember was shouting, breaking items, my mother’s tears streaking down over foundation she’d stopped bothering to reapply months ago. No family time. No holiday visits crowded around a table. No family traditions, no sense of belonging to anything bigger than the four walls of that house and whatever was breaking inside it that week. Nothing.

I did the thing I always did when a question got too big to hold — I started counting stuff instead of answering it. Four cracks in the ceiling tile behind her head, branching off from each other like a river on a map. Two pens clipped to her folder, one of them probably out of ink from the way she kept clicking it without writing. It was a stupid habit, counting things instead of feeling them. It worked better than actually thinking about the question, though, so I kept doing it.

The tears fell freely by the time I looked back at her and shook my head.

“We’re so sorry, Athena,” Mrs. Sophia said, sensing my sorrow, her voice dipping lower.

“It sounds like you had a rough childhood, but the law is the law. We’ll have to place you in foster care for now. We’ll also put out an announcement, in case anyone comes forward.”

“And if no one comes forward?” I asked, feeling broken, the words scraping on the way out.

She shook her head gently, the movement small and practiced. “Your foster family can choose to officially adopt you, or you’d go back to the group home.”

I nodded, and that was the end of the meeting, just like that — my whole future folded up and filed away in a tablet in under ten minutes.

“Thank you for your time, Athena.”

“It was nice talking to you,” she said, and left, Mr. David trailing behind her without ever having said a single word the entire time.

I lay still on the bed after they’d gone, my eyes blurry from crying, the ceiling tiles blurring into each other. I got up eventually, walked to the mirror, and washed my face again, water running pink-tinged with the last of the makeup smudged around my eyes from crying so hard. I looked broken — thinned out, eyes red and sunken, cheeks hollow in a way I didn’t remember them being before the accident, like grief had physically carved something out of me overnight.

I went back and lay down, turning over everything that had happened in the last sixteen years, the good scraps and the bad ones both, trying to find some thread in it that made sense of where I’d ended up.

Maybe this accident was an escape from a life I’d wished didn’t exist, some cruel kind of mercy dressed up as tragedy.

Maybe I had a second chance to actually make something of my life, a blank page where there used to be someone else’s fighting.

I promised myself I’d use it, whatever “it” ended up meaning. I didn’t know yet how literally that promise was about to be tested.

I must have drifted off somewhere in the middle of turning it all over, because the next thing I registered was Ava easing the door shut behind her, a fresh tray balanced against her hip. She didn’t say anything at first, just set the tray down and pulled the little stool close the way she had before, watching me with an expression that had gone softer since this morning, like word of the meeting had already made its way down whatever grapevine ran through this hospital.

“Rough one?” she asked eventually, nudging the tray an inch closer to me.

“They’re putting me in foster care.” Saying it out loud a second time made it feel more real than the first time had, like repetition was what finally cemented a fact into place. “If nobody claims me.”

Ava didn’t offer up anything falsely comforting, no it’ll all work out or everything happens for a reason, and I was grateful for that more than I could have said. She just nodded slowly, like she’d expected as much. “Divine mentioned she might put in for it. For you, I mean.” She said it carefully, testing how I’d take the information, watching my face for a reaction.

Something in my chest lifted before I could stop it, a small, fragile hope I didn’t want to look at too closely in case looking at it made it disappear. “She did?”

“Don’t get too excited yet. Nothing’s decided.” But Ava was smiling when she said it, the kind of smile that gave away more than the words did.

I picked at the food on the tray without much appetite, my mind circling back to the missing scars, to the healed skin under the bandage that still didn’t make sense no matter how many times I turned it over. I almost told Ava about it — the words were right there, halfway up my throat — but something stopped me before they came out. Some instinct, quiet but insistent, told me it wasn’t information to hand out yet, not until I understood it myself. So I swallowed the question along with the rest of my dinner and let the room go quiet around us, the machines beeping their same steady rhythm, counting down toward whatever came next.