Sometimes, life throws surprises your way that leave you in awe for decades. I still remember that brisk October afternoon like it happened yesterday. I was walking back from the market in the neighboring town, mumbling under my breath about the rocky road and the heavy sacks of potatoes weighing down my arms.
At forty-two, I lived alone—if you don’t count Max, a ginger tabby who looked more like a throw pillow than a cat. After my marriage ended, things hadn’t gone smoothly—neither in my love life nor with my grown kids. I worked as the librarian in our small town, knitted socks in the evenings, and watched soap operas—just your average rural routine.
I was wondering if I’d make it home without throwing my back out when I saw her. A little girl, maybe five or six, huddled under an old oak, hugging her knees in a threadbare coat. I froze, thinking my eyes were playing tricks. What kind of person leaves a child alone between villages, in that kind of cold?
“Hey, sweetheart, where are your parents?” I called out gently.
She looked up slowly—pale face, wide frightened eyes, lips trembling. She didn’t speak. Just curled in tighter.
“Oh honey, you’re freezing.” I set down my bags and sat beside her. “I’m Margaret Ellis. What’s your name?”
“L-Lila,” she whispered, barely audible.
“Lila, would you like to come to my house? It’s warm there, and I’ll make some tea. We can talk after you warm up, alright?”
She nodded faintly. I took her icy hand in mine and, with potatoes in one arm and her in the other, we made our way back—me trudging along, her skipping like a little bird trying to keep up.
The moment we got home, I wrapped her in a blanket, turned the heater on, and put the kettle up. Max, who normally hated strangers, jumped into her lap and started purring so loud he could shake the walls.
“Well, he likes you,” I said with a grin. “That’s rare.”
She timidly petted him, shoulders loosening for the first time.
“How old are you, Lila?”
“Five… I think.”
“Do you know your last name, where you live?”
She shook her head. My chest tightened. Something was terribly wrong.
That night, I fed her some stew and leftover cornbread, tucked her into my bed, and I curled up on the old couch. I called the police, the nearby towns, anyone who might’ve reported a missing child. No one had.
Days passed. Then weeks. Lila slowly started to bloom—she smiled more, giggled when I read bedtime stories, even started humming. But she still wouldn’t—or couldn’t—remember how she ended up on that road.
The social worker shrugged again. “No leads,” she said. And I realized I had to make a decision.
An orphanage? I couldn’t even picture it without my stomach turning.
“Lila,” I asked her one evening as she was coloring dinosaurs on scrap paper. “Would you want to stay here? With me… for good?”
She froze, pencil in hand, then looked up: “Really? I can?”
“Yes. I’ll be your mom. If you’ll be my daughter.”
“And Max too?”
I chuckled, “And Max too.”
She jumped down and wrapped her arms around me. In that moment, I knew—we’d figure it all out, no matter what came.
What followed was a blur of paperwork, interviews, background checks. And then came the first day of school. I remember her clinging to my hand like she was headed into a lion’s den.
She wore a red polka-dot dress, white ribbons I spent an hour straightening. “Mom, what if I mess up?” she whispered.
That “Mom” still gives me chills. She first called me that when I was sick with a bad flu, and she tried to bring me tea—half of which ended up on the floor.
“You won’t mess up,” I told her. “You’re smart and brave. Just be you.”
“But what if they laugh?” she asked, eyes low.
Everyone in town knew about the “mystery child.” Gossip flowed like water.
I knelt and gave her a small notebook with kittens on the cover. “Write down everything interesting you learn, and tell me all about it at dinner.”
She nodded, hugging it to her chest.
The first few months were hard. She struggled in math, but when it came to art—she transformed. Colors poured out of her like they’d been waiting forever.
One day after a parent-teacher meeting, her art teacher, Ms. Dana Bloom, pulled me aside.
“Mrs. Ellis, Lila’s gifted,” she said, showing me a drawing—our neighborhood, rendered in fall colors so vivid it almost breathed. “You should consider art school for her.”
Art school meant money. And money was something I didn’t have much of. “I’ll think about it,” I said.
That evening, just as I was chopping onions for soup, there was a knock. It was Mrs. Carmen, our elderly neighbor.
“Margaret,” she said, handing me a bag. “Apples from my tree. And some jam. The girl needs vitamins.”
“Oh, Carmen—”
“No fuss. Listen, I do some house-cleaning in the city now and then. If you’re interested, I can put in a word.”
And that’s how my double weekends began—twice a month, I’d take a bus to the city and scrub apartments. Lila stayed with Carmen, who taught her how to bake and told her stories of when she was a girl.
By the end of the school year, we had just enough saved for her art program. It took two buses to get there, but Lila never complained.
Then came the middle school years—and with them, the questions.
“Why did they leave me?” she asked one night, tea trembling in her hands. “Was I not good enough?”
My throat tightened. “Lila—”
“No! Let me finish!” she burst out, knocking over her cup. “Normal kids know where they come from! I’m… no one. Just some kid someone dumped.”
“Don’t say that!”
“Why not? It’s true!”
She stormed off. I stayed behind, cleaning up the tea, feeling like I’d failed her.
An hour later, the front door slammed. I panicked. She was gone.
I found her at the cemetery, sitting by Carmen’s grave—who had passed the year before.
“Lila…” I whispered.
She looked up, soaked and shivering. “I didn’t mean it,” she sobbed.
I draped my coat around her and sat beside her on the wet bench.
“You know,” I said after a while, “at first I thought you’d stay for a few days. Then move on—to a home or distant family. But then you started drawing unicorns on my wallpaper—”
“They were dragons!” she protested, sniffling.
“Ah yes, dragons with three tails,” I grinned.
“That’s when I knew—I’d never let you go. Because you’re mine. Not by blood, but by choice.”
She buried her face in my shoulder. We stayed there, in the drizzle, until our bones ached from the cold—but our hearts were warm.
“Mom,” she whispered as we walked back, “Can we paint my room purple?”
“The grape kind or the violet kind?”
“I dunno,” she shrugged. “Let’s try both.”
We did. And though I could never quite tell what shade it ended up, Lila loved it.
By fifteen, she knew she wanted to be an artist. Her work started winning contests. One piece even went to a regional show.
“Mom! Guess what?” she cried one afternoon. “I got invited to a master class in the city. A whole week! With a real artist from New York!”
I smiled, masking the worry. Lodging, food, supplies… expensive. That night, I opened the jar of savings meant for her future. I counted—just enough. We’d make it work.
That week changed her. When she came back, she had this spark, this certainty. “I’m applying to art school after ninth grade,” she told me. “I’ll do my final exams externally.”
I saw it so clearly then—her future. And my solitude.
“Mom,” she said, “I’ll come home on weekends. Then someday I’ll return. Open an art studio here. For kids.”
I believed her.
“Fine,” I said. “But one condition: you send me every single painting.”
She laughed, hugging me tight.
And so it went. I picked up more work. She passed her exams. She got in.
Life in the city changed her—but never her heart. She called less, but always sent pictures of her art. I framed them all. My hallway became a gallery.
Then one day—“Mom,” she said quietly over the phone, “Remember that jacket I wore when you found me? Does it still exist?”
Of course it did. Folded neatly in the dresser drawer.
“There’s a tailor’s tag inside. I found the shop—it still exists. Maybe someone remembers.”
I felt a pang. “Are you sure, Lila?”
“I need to know. Otherwise, I’ll always wonder.”
She visited the shop. But the owner had changed. No records left. She returned home looking defeated.
“I don’t even know what I wanted,” she said through tears. “To find them? Say, ‘Hey, I’m the girl you left. What now?’”
She sat at the window, staring at nothing. “But then I thought—it’s their loss. They missed everything. You didn’t.”
I couldn’t speak. Just held her.
“Funny thing is,” she added later, “I remember more than I said. I was told to wait by that tree. And I did. Until you came.”
Two years later, she held her first solo show. I traveled to the city in my best dress, clutching wildflowers.
People buzzed around the gallery. Her paintings glowed with life. One man—her art professor—shook my hand and said, “Your daughter sees the soul of things.”
My daughter. How sweet that sounded.
“Mom!” she called, pulling me to the back.
The painting stopped me cold.
It was the road—the cracked one, with the old oak. Me, in my green raincoat, with grocery bags. Her, in her blue jacket, holding my hand.
Above us, through gray clouds, a golden beam of light.
“It’s called The Encounter,” she said. “Do you like it?”
I choked up. “I love it.”
That night, we had cake and tea in her tiny apartment. A photo of Max sat by the window—he’d passed quietly that winter.
“Oh,” she said suddenly, “Guess what? I got the grant for the art studio in our village!”
“In our village?”
“Yes! Kids there need art too. And someone needs to keep an eye on you.”
We both laughed.
There’s still work to do—porch repairs, garden cleanup—but the important things are in place.
The Encounter hangs in our living room now. Every time I look at it, I remember: the most important things in life come when you least expect them. All you have to do… is not walk past.
