I nodded, even though the gesture felt unnecessary. My attention kept returning to the girls, to the small details that made them real—the way one of them yawned, her mouth opening in a perfect, unguarded expression, the way the other seemed to settle more deeply into the blanket, her breathing steady and soft.
“They look like you,” I said after a moment, though I wasn’t entirely sure if that was true or if I just needed to say something that connected us, something that made this feel less like observation and more like belonging.
“They have your eyes,” Lila replied, and there was something in her tone that made me believe her, even if I couldn’t quite see it yet.
Time moved strangely in that room, stretching and compressing in ways that made it hard to measure, each second feeling both fleeting and heavy, as if it carried more meaning than it should have. I leaned a little closer to the glass, drawn in by something I couldn’t quite name, and that was when the words slipped out before I had a chance to reconsider them.
“I just want to hold them.”
I hadn’t planned to say it, hadn’t rehearsed it in the way I had imagined so many other things, but once it was out there, it felt like the only truth that mattered, the only thing that needed to be said in that moment. Lila’s expression shifted slightly, softening in a way that suggested she understood more than I had put into words.
“I know,” she said quietly.
There was a pause, the kind that settles into a space without being uncomfortable, but then it was interrupted by the presence of someone else, a figure who had been standing just far enough away to remain unobtrusive but close enough to step in when necessary. Officer Grant Whitaker had been assigned to oversee the visit, his posture straight, his expression neutral in a way that suggested years of maintaining boundaries that weren’t his to question.
“You’ve got a few minutes left,” he said, his tone measured, not unkind but firm in the way rules often are when they don’t allow room for negotiation.
I nodded automatically, though something in me resisted the idea that this moment was already nearing its end, that after everything, this was all I was going to get—a few minutes behind glass, a glimpse of a life I wasn’t allowed to fully step into yet.
