One day, as I was cleaning an old music box, the phone rang.
It was Thomas.
‘Mum?’ His voice was trembling. ‘Where… where did you go?’
‘Where did I go?’ I repeated. ‘You left me at the petrol station.’
He hesitated. He assured me that Candice had told him I had disappeared, that they had come back for me but couldn’t find me. I knew he was lying, or that he himself believed her lie.
‘I’m sorry,’ he finally said.
I believed that. But I replied that I couldn’t go back. Maybe never. I told him that I was working and doing well. He was surprised:
‘You’re working?’
‘Yes. And doing pretty well.’
Since then, he’s been calling often. Sometimes he comes to visit. Even with Candice. She’s cold, but I think I’ve noticed a shadow of regret in her eyes.
Bo continued to visit. He brought strange things and asked me to come up with a story for them. And once, on a rainy evening, a year after we met, he handed me an old frame with a photograph of a woman with a baby.
‘She reminds me of you,’ he said quietly.
‘Were you married?’ I asked.
He nodded. ‘A long time ago. It didn’t work out. But I learned something.’
Without thinking, I took his hand.
‘Me too,’ I replied.
We sat in silence, but that was enough.
Almost three years have passed. I still live above the shop. Thomas and I have reconnected. And Bo?
He still travels. But he always comes back.
Sometimes I remember that petrol station. That moment when my life ended and began again. When my closest friend abandoned me, and a stranger gave me a second chance.
They say that everything in life happens for a reason. I don’t know if that’s true. But I do know one thing:
The family we choose sometimes comes when our relatives turn away.
So if you suddenly find yourself alone and wet at an abandoned petrol station, don’t give up. Life knows how to send you exactly the people you need — even if they are not at all like the ones you expected to meet.