Spring was the season most children got adopted. Not because it was warmer, or because people felt kinder. It was practical. Easier to travel. Easier to clean and dress a child properly when the snow no longer threatened to soak their boots or chap their skin. Easier to imagine new beginnings when the sky stopped biting and the flowers remembered how to open.
At the orphanage, spring was always busiest. New arrivals still came, but departures came faster. Sometimes two in a week. Sometimes three. Names were called before breakfast. Bags appeared beside the front door before anyone had even stirred their porridge. Sometimes we had time to say goodbye. Mostly, we didn't.
The twins with the red hair left first. They had once shared the crib with Evelune, pressed so tightly together in their sleep they looked like two branches from the same root. Their names rhymed, but no one ever said them in the right order. They didn't seem to mind. They had a language between themselves. Whispers, glances, little sounds only they understood.
A very kind old lady came to take them. I watched from the hallway as she knelt to button one of their coats, her hands trembling but careful. She told the Matron that her grandson had died, that her house had been too quiet since. She said the twins would fill it with noise again. She smiled while she spoke, but I saw the wetness in her eyes. The Matron nodded with a softness I didn't know she had.
The twins waved as they left. Not to everyone. Just to each other. One of them turned once before stepping into the carriage and looked back at the building—not at the windows, not at the door, but at the roof. As if saying goodbye to the whole place all at once.
I didn't wave back. Evelune didn't either. She stood beside me, small and silent, her hands tucked inside the sleeves of her coat. The purple bunny dangled from one hand, its ear brushing the floor. I reached down and pulled her a little closer, and she leaned into me without a word.
That same week, a baker and his wife came. They smelled like flour and sweet butter, and their clothes were warm from standing near an oven too long. They had no children of their own and were looking for someone to pass the bakery to once they retired. The woman kept her hands clasped while she looked at the girls lined up in the hallway, as if she was trying to pray through the decision.
They chose a girl who always helped with the younger ones. She was quiet, but kind. I had seen her tie shoes that weren't hers, change diapers when the caretakers weren't looking, feed children who couldn't hold their spoons. She was the kind of child they said "had a good heart," though I didn't know what that meant outside of stories.
She didn't say anything to us before she left. No goodbye. No look. But the night before, I saw her suitcase at the door. It sat beside her boots, already tied with string. I could tell she had packed it herself. Not because it was messy—it wasn't—but because it looked small. Half-filled. Like she had only taken the things she thought she was allowed to keep.
I sat with Evelune under the stairs that night, the spelling book open between us, but my eyes kept drifting to the hallway, to that little case and the shoes beside it. Evelune followed my gaze once. She didn't ask what I was thinking. She just laid her hand on the page of the book and left it there, quiet and warm.
By morning, the suitcase was gone. So was she. That was how it usually went. People disappeared like snowmelt. Slowly. Quietly. Until only their name tags remained, stitched to extra shirts no one wanted. Each adoption felt like a leaf falling upward. Strange. Out of order. But final, all the same.
It wasn't jealousy. I didn't want to leave. I never had. I didn't want a stranger's table or a stranger's bed or the weight of new names pressed into my mouth. I only wanted to stay here. In this place I knew. Even if it was cold. Even if no one ever said my name except Evelune, and only in the way her hand tightened on mine. Even if the roof leaked when it rained and the broth came thin on Wednesdays.
But Evelune... she had somewhere to go. She didn't know it, not really. But the Matron did. She'd started brushing Evelune's hair more often, with the good comb. Started giving her seconds at meals without being asked. Started whispering to Sister Alira when Evelune passed by. She had begun preparing her. I noticed. And Evelune noticed me noticing.
Sometimes, at night, she sat closer. Not clinging, just near. She reached for my hand more often. When we read the book, she tapped the letters I had shown her so many times before, then looked at me like she wanted them to say something new. Like she wanted the letters to grow bigger. To stretch into words.
I pointed to her name again. Slowly. E. V. E. L. U. N. E. She didn't smile. But her eyes held mine longer. When she looked away, she rested her head against my side and pulled the bunny to her chest. I stroked her hair. Outside, the frost was gone.
The ground had turned soft and brown, and the snow had pulled back into the edges of the garden. The cherry tree hadn't bloomed yet, but its buds had begun to swell, little green promises tucked into wood.
The cat had returned fully now. I saw him most mornings—on the porch railing, or on the garden path, or perched on the windowsill with his eyes reflecting the sunlight like glass. He didn't stay long. But I liked knowing he was there. Watching. Waiting.
The other children began guessing who would be next. Whispers spread after every knock on the door. Whenever the Matron smoothed her skirt or opened her office drawer, someone would start packing their few things, just in case. I heard names in the hallway. Hushed predictions. Someone said Evelune might be next. I heard it. And I knew it was true.
Soon, the Count would come. And when he did, he would bring spring into the house in a way none of us wanted. He would take her back. Not cruelly. Not harshly. Just... completely. She had always belonged to someone else. I had just been allowed to keep her for a little while. I tried not to think about it. Not directly. But I knew. And so did she.
She'd begun looking out the window more often. Watching the road. She never pointed. Never tilted her head in question. But she watched. And when I caught her, she would slowly turn back to me, like she hadn't been watching at all.
I didn't ask her what she hoped to see. She didn't ask me what I feared. We had no words for it anyway. Just the silence between us, growing heavier with each suitcase packed. Each child who left. Each bloom waiting to open on the cherry tree. And every sunrise, a little warmer than the last.