The girl stopped singing when she saw the woman crying.
For a moment, she looked more scared of the tears than she had been of the shouting.
“Did I do something wrong?” she whispered.
The woman shook her head, but she couldn’t speak.
She took the cassette with both hands, like it might disappear if she breathed too hard.
“What’s your name?”
The girl looked toward the police station door.
“Emma.”
The woman’s knees almost gave out.
“My daughter’s name was Emma.”
The girl stepped back.
“No. I don’t have a mom.”
The woman’s voice cracked.
“You did.”
She opened the handbag again and pulled out an old photograph hidden behind the lining.
A little girl in pink pajamas.
Sitting beside a cassette player.
Smiling with the same eyes.
The homeless girl stared at it, her lips trembling.
“That’s me?”
The woman covered her mouth, sobbing now.
“You vanished eight years ago. They told me you were gone.”
A police officer came outside, but stopped when he saw the tape in the woman’s hand.
The girl whispered, “The woman who raised me said I was found near a bus stop. She said this song was the only thing I remembered.”
The rich woman slowly reached toward her, then stopped, afraid to frighten her again.
“I accused you,” she cried. “And you came back carrying the only sound I had left of you.”
The girl looked at her for a long, shaking second.
Then she sang the next line.
And the woman fell to her knees, because it was the lullaby she had written for her baby.