“She’s ours,” she sobbed. “Daniel, she’s our daughter.”
She dropped to her knees and pulled me into her arms before I fully understood. She smelled like soap, rain, and exhaustion. Something clean. Something safe. Daniel knelt beside us and wrapped both of us in his arms, crying openly.
I stayed stiff, not because I didn’t want them, but because I was afraid. What if they were wrong? What if someone later said no, the real Lila is someone else, and I would lose this too?
Daniel lifted me carefully. When he brushed my burned arm, I made a choked sound. His expression changed at once. Tenderness hardened into quiet fury.
“Who did this to you?” he asked.
I didn’t answer. I never did. But I think my silence told him enough.
They drove me straight to the nearest hospital. I didn’t understand every word the doctors used—severe burn, infection, malnutrition, old scars, criminal neglect—but I understood enough. Nurses cleaned me with a gentleness that felt unreal. Hannah turned away to cry every time they found another scar. A doctor explained that there was nothing physically wrong with my throat.
“Selective mutism,” he said. “It’s trauma. Her mind shut her voice down to protect her.”