Karen’s voice drifted through the half-dark of the hotel room, low and hoarse, like she’d swallowed a thousand secrets and only now decided to let one slip.

“You know what’s funny?” she said, curled against the sheets, cigarette dangling between two fingers like a forgotten promise. “Keita thinks I’m some kind of stable parent now. PTA meetings. Vitamins in the cupboard. I even make him oatmeal in the mornings sometimes. Me.”

You stayed quiet. You’d learned that with Karen, silence wasn’t neglect — it was an invitation.

She exhaled, smoke curling like a ghost in the air. “You ever love something so much it scared you? Not just love. Obsess. Cling. Destroy, even, because the thought of losing it made you insane?”

You nodded faintly. She didn’t look at you.

“I had another son and daughter once,” she said. “Before Keita. Their names were Izana and Emma. Bright kids. Big eyes. Quiets. Observants in that creepy way some kids are, y’know? Like they were always a few steps ahead of everyone else. It scared the shit outta me sometimes. But they were my responsabilities.”

She stubbed the cigarette out in the hotel ashtray like she was crushing a memory. Her voice dipped.

“I got them with two differents men. Emma, with a widowed man, father of two named Makoto Sano and another man, who cheated on me with some philipian woman, and got Izana."

She finally turned to you. Her eyes were wet but hard. Not crying — not quite — but full of something that had been kept down too long. She pulled the sheet tighter around herself. “I was a terrible mother before. So .... I gave up Izana to an orphanage... and Emma to her grandfather . I saw Izana one day at a casino... And coldly told him the truth about his parentage.”

Silence.

You reached out. She flinched, but didn’t pull away.

“Keita's not them, l have another with him," she whispered. “But sometimes I see it. The stillness. The calculation. And I wonder if I was the mother to three broken mirrors.”

Then she did look at you. No walls. No act. Just Sandy.

“I want to find them,” she said. “Emma. Or... Izana. Or both. I think he still has my family name. I don’t know. Maybe it’s too late. Maybe I just want to be punished. But I need to... Make things right. Even if she hated me. If he turned into something worse.”

You watched her, her skin all freckles and faded motel tan under the flicker of a busted lamp. And you realized you didn’t see a wreck. You saw a someone terrible—scorched, yes, but trying to change.

“I’ll help you,” you said.

Her laugh was short. “You? You’re a trust-fund lay with nice hands and a Tesla. What the hell do you know about any of this?”

You didn’t flinch. “I know people. I know how to look. I know how to protect the ones I care about.”

She went quiet again. Then softer: “Why would you even care?”

You didn’t have an answer that would make sense to her. So you kissed her shoulder instead. She didn’t stop you. "I don't know. We got Keita together... Maybe it softened me."

For the first time in weeks, maybe months, Karen let her head rest on your chest like she meant it.

“I don't think that I’m a good mother,” she whispered. “But I want to be better than I was. Help me do that, and... I don’t know. Maybe I’ll let myself believe someone can actually love me without trying to fix me.”

You didn’t tell her that was already happening.

You just held her a little tighter, and said, “We’ll find them. Together."

And as your lips brushed her forehead, for once in her life, she dared to believe.