Two years later, on the anniversary of the day she first saw those two pink lines, Margaret sat in her garden at dusk. The roses were in full bloom. Aisha had brought her youngest daughter, little Soraya, to visit.
“Teta,” the four-year-old asked, climbing into Margaret’s lap, “did you really have a baby in your tummy before?”
Margaret smiled, the lines around her eyes deepening with both sorrow and peace.
“I thought I did, my darling. And for a little while, that was enough.”
She looked up at the darkening sky where the first stars were appearing over the ancient medina of Fes.
“Sometimes God answers prayers in ways we cannot understand. I asked for one child. Instead, He gave me many. And He taught me that love doesn’t need blood or birth to be real. It only needs a willing heart.”
Soraya rested her small head against Margaret’s chest, and for the first time in years, Margaret felt the faintest echo of movement—not inside her belly, but deep within her soul.
She closed her eyes and whispered the old lullaby she had once sung to an empty womb, now singing it to the universe itself.
And somewhere, in the quiet spaces between what was and what could have been, a mother’s love lived on—complete, unbroken, and finally, at peace.
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