“He sure is,” I agreed, smiling despite myself. “Strongest dino out there.”
For a moment, things felt almost normal. Almost. But then reality came crashing back when a woman in a beige pantsuit showed up, clipboard in hand. Social worker. Time to face facts.
The next few hours were a blur. Lila was taken to a temporary foster home—a nice couple who lived nearby and had experience with emergency placements. Meanwhile, Ramirez and I started digging into the note. Who was Lila’s mom? Where was she now? Why had she done this?
Turns out, finding answers wasn’t easy. No one at the block party seemed to recognize Lila, which meant her mother hadn’t brought her directly from the neighborhood. We checked local shelters and hospitals, but nothing panned out. Whoever she was, she’d planned this carefully—too carefully.
Days turned into weeks, and every lead we followed ended in frustration. Still, I couldn’t shake the image of that little girl walking up to us, trusting us to fix what was broken. Trusting us to make things better. And honestly? I didn’t want to let her down.
Then, one evening, about three weeks after the block party, Ramirez burst into the precinct looking like he’d just won the lottery. “Got her!” he exclaimed, waving a piece of paper triumphantly. “Found Lila’s mom!”
It turned out she’d been living in her car, bouncing between parking lots and rest stops to avoid being noticed. After dropping Lila off at the block party, she’d driven herself to a clinic, hoping to get help for depression and anxiety. Unfortunately, the waitlist was long, and she’d run out of options. She’d left Lila with us because she truly believed we could give her a better life than she ever could.
Her name was Marisol, and when we met her, she looked exhausted—but determined. She told us everything:honte how she’d lost her job during the pandemic, how her family lived across the country and refused to help, how she’d spent months rationing groceries so Lila wouldn’t go hungry. How she’d cried herself to sleep every night, wondering if she was making the right decision.
“I just wanted her to be okay,” Marisol said, tears streaming down her face. “Even if that meant she wasn’t with me.”
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