Elena stared at the boy as the room blurred around her.

“Who is your mother?” she whispered.

The boy swallowed painfully.

“Maria.”

The penlight slipped from Elena’s hand.

Maria had been her younger sister.

Missing for six years.

Declared dead by everyone except Elena, who never stopped checking hospital records, shelters, and police reports.

The woman in the navy suit moved toward the boy. “We’re leaving.”

Elena stood between them.

“No, you’re not.”

The boy began to cry silently, his whole body shaking in the chair.

“She gives me drops,” he whispered. “She says if I talk, my face will get worse.”

Elena turned cold.

The woman’s lips trembled, but she forced a laugh. “He’s sick. He makes things up.”

The boy reached under his collar and pulled out a broken necklace.

Elena covered her mouth.

It was Maria’s.

The tiny silver heart she had given her the night before she disappeared.

Inside was a photo of two sisters.

Elena and Maria.

The boy whispered, “Mom said you would know.”

Elena dropped to her knees and took his face gently in both hands, careful not to touch the swollen side.

“What’s your name, sweetheart?”

“Leo.”

Her eyes filled.

Maria had always said if she had a son, she would name him Leo.

The woman grabbed her bag and stepped toward the door, but two orderlies blocked the hallway.

Elena’s voice shook as she called security.

Then she looked back at Leo.

“Where is Maria?”

Leo’s chin trembled.

“She’s alive,” he cried. “But she’s locked in the basement. She told me to get sick enough so someone would bring me here.”

Elena broke.

She pulled him against her carefully, sobbing into his hair.

“You found me,” she whispered. “You brave little boy, you found me.”

As police rushed down the hallway, Leo clung to her scrubs with both hands.

“Will you save Mom?”

Elena held him tighter, tears falling onto his shoulder.

“Yes,” she said. “And this time, nobody is taking either of you from us again.”