“We’re stuck at the crossing again,” Klavdiya Petrovna sighed, adjusting her woolen scarf. “What do you think, Anya? Maybe we’ll get lucky and find a gold bar on the tracks?”

“As if,” I smirked. “You’d be lucky to find a frozen crow here.”

The November wind cut through me like a knife. I had just finished my evening shift at the station, where I had worked as a cashier for years. The sky hung low, heavy with the weight of impending snow. Streetlights flickered along the railway, casting eerie shadows that danced across the pavement.

Three years had passed since Nikolai’s death, yet the grief still lingered. I often worked late, avoiding the silence of my empty apartment, where only an old radio hummed quietly in the kitchen. Occasionally, I wrote letters to my friend Tamara in Novosibirsk, though with three children, she had little time to reply.

That night, instead of taking my usual route home, I decided to cut across the spare tracks. My legs ached with exhaustion when I heard it—a faint, trembling sound. At first, I thought it was the wind whistling through the rails. But then, it came again—a soft, desperate cry.

“Kitty-kitty,” I called into the darkness, peering between the wooden sleepers.

The cry grew louder. It wasn’t a cat. It was a child.

My heart pounded as I hurried toward the sound, stumbling over frozen ground. Behind a pile of discarded railway ties, curled up in a tight ball, was a little girl. Under the dim glow of a nearby lantern, I saw her tear-streaked face, her wide eyes filled with fear.

“My God,” I whispered, kneeling beside her. “How did you end up here?”

She didn’t answer, only shivered violently. Her tiny frame was ice-cold.

“You’re freezing,” I murmured, brushing the tangled hair from her face. “Come with me. We’ll go home, warm up, and have some tea with raspberry jam.”

She didn’t resist as I lifted her. She weighed almost nothing.

“My name is Anna Vasilyevna,” I told her as I carried her through the dark streets. “I live nearby. I have a cat named Vasily. He’s a little troublemaker—always peeing in my slippers if I forget to feed him.”

She didn’t speak, but I felt her small body relax slightly against mine.

At home, I lit the stove and placed a bowl of hot soup in front of her. She ate cautiously, her wide eyes darting toward me as if waiting for something.

“Don’t be afraid,” I reassured her. “No one will hurt you here.”

After a bath, wrapped in one of my old nightgowns with the sleeves rolled up nearly to her elbows, she finally spoke.

“Will you really not throw me out?” she asked hesitantly.

“Of course not,” I said, combing her damp hair. “Will you tell me your name?”

“Lena,” she whispered. “Lenochka.”

The next morning, I took her to the police station. The officers searched for reports of missing children but found nothing. A young officer sighed and looked at me sympathetically.

“We’ll have to place her in an orphanage. It’s the procedure, you understand…”

“No,” I said firmly. “We won’t.”

“Anna Vasilyevna, you live alone…” he hesitated.

“And?” I crossed my arms. “I can manage.”

That evening, as we sat in the kitchen, Lenochka cupped a warm mug of milk in her small hands.

“Why didn’t you have children?” she asked suddenly.

The ladle in my hand nearly slipped.

“Who told you that?”

“There are no pictures,” she said with a shrug.

“Smart girl,” I chuckled. “Maybe it just wasn’t meant to be. But now I have you.”

For the first time since I found her, she smiled. And in that moment, I knew I would never let her go.

A New Beginning

The guardianship process took three long months—endless paperwork, skeptical officials questioning if I understood the responsibility. I simply nodded and said, “We’ll manage.” At night, I counted every ruble, stretching my salary to feed two. I repurposed old curtains into dresses for her, reshaped my coat into a jacket that fit her tiny frame.

Neighbors whispered. “Why does she need this? She has no children of her own, so she took someone else’s. What if the child has bad blood?”

The worst was Nina Stepanovna from the first floor. Every time she saw us, she’d sigh dramatically and mutter, “Oh, Anna, you’re going to regret this…”

One day, Lenochka had enough. “And you, Aunt Nina, are just bitter because your own son never visits you.”

I nearly choked trying to hold back my laughter. Of course, I scolded her later, but deep down, I was proud.

Life found its rhythm. Lenochka started school, and I took a job as a janitor there just to be close to her. Teachers adored her—quick-witted, hardworking. In the evenings, we sat at the kitchen table. She did her homework while I checked her notebooks.

One weekend, while making dumplings, she held up a lumpy one and giggled. “Mom, look! This one looks like our school director!”

I shook my head. “Give it here before we start a scandal.”

There were tough times. In sixth grade, she fell in with the wrong crowd, started skipping school. One night, she ran away. I found her at the station, shivering on a bench.

“Where were you going?” I asked, sitting beside her.

“I don’t know,” she sniffled. “Everyone says you’re not my real mother.”

“And what is a ‘real’ mother?” I asked gently. “The one who left you in the cold?”

She buried her face in my shoulder. “I’m sorry… I won’t do it again.”

Years passed. Lenochka grew into a strong young woman. After school, she announced she was going to medical school.

“I want to help people,” she said.

The day she graduated with honors, she sat beside me, her medal gleaming on her chest.

“Mom, maybe it was fate that you walked that way that night?”

“Maybe,” I smiled. “But fate only gives us a choice. The rest is up to us.”

When she moved to the city, I packed her things—an old suitcase, a few rubles, a jar of raspberry jam.

“Mom, stop fussing! I’m not a child anymore!”

“For me, you always will be.”

Years later, she surprised me. She had saved, worked tirelessly, and bought me a small house with a garden.

When I saw it, I cried. “How, Lenochka? This must have cost a fortune.”

“You think I worked all these years for nothing?” she teased.

Now, I sit on my veranda in the mornings, sipping tea. In the evenings, she visits, and we talk about everything and nothing.

She once told me, “You saved me.”

But she doesn’t understand. She saved me, too.