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The Silent Promise
I’ll never forget his tiny fingers gripping my t-shirt, his eyes wide with fear as the social worker tried to pull him away from me. His screams still echo in my head, five years later. “Thomas! Thomas! I don’t want to go!” I stood there frozen, unable to move. What could I have done at fourteen? Since Mom died, I was the one who prepared his meals, checked his homework, tucked him in every night while telling him the same stories she used to tell us. Dad was already nothing more than an absence.
“You understand, Thomas,” the social worker had explained with that voice adults use when speaking to children they underestimate, “you’re a minor, you can’t take care of your little brother. And your father…” She had left her sentence hanging, as if the empty bottles and dilapidated apartment spoke for themselves. “Lucas will be placed in a good family. You too, actually.”
When they took Lucas away, I swore in the silence of our empty apartment that this was only temporary. One day, I would get my little brother back. No matter what it took.
Hands That Grow Callused
My first foster family lived twenty kilometers from Lucas’s. I remember the first Sunday I was allowed to see him. He had lost weight, his eyes had lost their sparkle. He jumped into my arms as soon as he saw me, hugging me so tightly it hurt. “When are you coming to get me?” he asked, his voice trembling. I felt the weight of his foster family’s gaze on my shoulders.
“Soon,” I had whispered in his ear. “I promise.”
For three years, I worked one odd job after another after school. Waiter on weekends, paper delivery at dawn, tutoring neighborhood kids. Every penny was carefully saved. My grades couldn’t slip – it was my only chance to succeed. At night, I studied by the light of my desk lamp until my eyes burned. At seventeen, my hands were already callused, and I had the gaze of a man who knows what he wants.
My caseworkers found me “mature for my age” – that compliment that speaks of nothing but a stolen childhood. Mrs. Lenoir, my second foster mother, sometimes looked at me with a sadness that made me uncomfortable. “You have the right to be a teenager, Thomas,” she would repeat. But being a normal teenager meant abandoning Lucas to the system, and that, I couldn’t do.
Once a month, I took the train, then the bus, to see my little brother. Sixty minutes of travel for forty-five minutes of supervised visitation. I always brought him something small: a book, a figurine, a drawing. Fragments of the family we once were, that we would be again.
A Break in the Storm
On my eighteenth birthday, I received a rejection letter. My first application to become Lucas’s legal guardian had been denied. “Unstable situation… Insufficient income… Inadequate housing…” The words danced before my eyes like so many slaps to the face. I had calculated everything: my high school diploma in hand, my small studio apartment, my part-time job at a bookstore that would allow me to take evening classes at the university.
That night, I walked for hours in the rain, until my clothes were soaked, until my tears blended with the drops streaming down my face. Turning a corner, I ran into Mrs. Meunier, my former neighbor, the one who sometimes slipped us a pan of lasagna or watched Lucas when I had to go grocery shopping.
“Thomas? My God, you’re soaked! Come in.”
In her small apartment that smelled of cinnamon, she served me hot tea. And I told her everything. The visits, the savings, the paperwork, the rejection. She listened without interrupting, her wrinkled fingers wrapped around her mug.
“I have a spare room,” she said simply. “Since my son left for Australia, it’s not being used. It would be perfect for two brothers, don’t you think?”
That night, for the first time in years, I slept a dreamless sleep.
The Battle of Hearts
The children’s court was a cold building, all right angles and harsh fluorescent lighting. I wore my only ironed shirt, the one I kept for job interviews. Lucas sat across the room, next to his foster family. He had grown – he was now eleven, but his eyes, when they met mine, were those of the six-year-old boy I had sworn to protect.
The social worker listed the facts in a monotone voice: my modest income, my work schedule incompatible with raising a child, my young age. I clenched my fists under the table. Then it was my turn to speak.
“Lucas is all I have left,” I began, my throat tight. “When our mother died, I promised to look after him. Every day for five years, I’ve worked, studied, saved to keep that promise.”
I showed them Lucas’s report cards that I had carefully saved, the drawings he had made for me, photos of the rare moments we had been able to share. And then, Mrs. Meunier stood up. She talked about the apartment, the room ready to welcome Lucas, her presence to watch over him when I would be in class.
And then, against all odds, Mrs. Fournier, Lucas’s foster mother, asked to speak.
“Lucas talks about his brother every day,” she said softly. “He keeps his photos under his pillow. Thomas calls him every night to help with homework, even from a distance.” She pulled out an envelope. “I wrote this letter to support his application. These two children belong with each other.”
When the judge announced his decision, I thought my legs would give way beneath me. Lucas ran across the room and threw himself into my arms. I lifted him up, like when he was small, even though he was now almost too heavy for me.
“We’re going home,” I whispered in his ear. “For good this time.”
The Horizon Rediscovered
Today, Lucas is thirteen. He sleeps in the room next to mine, his soccer posters covering the walls that Mrs. Meunier let us repaint blue. I’m finishing my studies, and the bookstore has offered me a permanent contract. It’s not easy every day. Sometimes we argue about little things – housework, homework, bedtime. Like all brothers, I suppose.
Last night, while organizing his closet, I found an old drawing, folded in quarters. Two figures holding hands in front of what looked like a house. The taller one carried what seemed to be a book, the smaller one a ball. Underneath, in childish handwriting: “Thomas and Lucas forever.”
It’s in moments like these that I understand family isn’t about blood or papers – but about silent promises we refuse to break.