The teenager looked down at his brother.

“What?”

The little boy pointed toward the woman with a shaking finger.

“I’ve seen her before.”

The woman in the plum coat started crying harder.

She walked toward the front of the courtroom slowly, as if every step hurt.

The teenager tightened his arm around his brother.

“Who are you?”

She stopped a few feet away.

For a moment, she couldn’t answer.

Then she reached into her coat and pulled out an old photograph.

Two little boys.

One was the teenager.

The other was still a baby.

The teenager stared at it.

His face went pale.

“Where did you get that?”

The woman’s lips trembled.

“Your mother sent it to me.”

The courtroom went still again.

The teenager shook his head.

“My mother is dead.”

“I know.”

Her voice broke.

“She was my sister.”

The teenager stopped breathing.

The little boy looked between them.

The woman wiped at her tears.

“I’ve been searching for you both for six years.”

The teenager’s expression hardened beneath the shock.

“Then where were you?”

The question hit her harder than anything else had.

She lowered her head.

“I didn’t know where they took you.”

She looked back at him.

“After your mother died, I was told you had been adopted together.”

The teenager’s eyes filled again.

“We weren’t.”

“I know that now.”

She stepped closer.

“When I finally found your names in the court records, I came here as fast as I could.”

The teenager looked at the judge.

Then at the lawyers.

Then back at the woman.

“What are you saying?”

She took another trembling breath.

“I’m saying you don’t have to prove you can raise your brother alone.”

His face crumpled.

She held out the photograph.

“You have family.”

The little boy slowly stepped out from beneath his brother’s arm.

“Are you our aunt?”

The woman dropped to her knees.

“Yes.”

That one word broke all three of them.

The little boy ran into her first.

She caught him and sobbed into his hair.

The teenager stayed frozen.

He had spent years believing that being strong meant never needing anyone.

Now there was someone kneeling in front of him, crying because she had finally found him.

She looked up.

“I’m not here to take him from you.”

The teenager’s lips trembled.

“Then why are you here?”

She reached one hand toward him.

“To make sure nobody ever separates you again.”

The teenager covered his face.

For the first time that day, he stopped trying to look like an adult.

And cried like a sixteen-year-old boy who had finally been given permission to be somebody’s child again.