I knew what it felt like to walk out of a hospital alone. To lose your entire world in one moment. Those kids had already lost their parents—and now the system was about to take the only thing they had left: each other.
I didn’t sleep that night. Every time I closed my eyes, I imagined four small hands being pulled apart in some office, someone deciding who went where.
In the morning, the post was still there. A phone number sat at the bottom.
Before I could talk myself out of it, I hit call.
“Child Services, this is Karen.”