— What was that? — I stopped midway to the station and held my breath.
A thin, persistent sob drifted from the left. February wind licked at my neck and worried the hem of my coat. I turned toward the tracks, where a dark, abandoned switchman’s hut cut against the white of the snow.
Right by the rails lay a bundle. A filthy, worn blanket — with a tiny hand slipping out.
— Dear God… — I lifted it from the snow.
A girl. A year old, maybe a bit less. Her lips were tinged blue, but she was breathing. The crying was barely a thread — as if she hadn’t strength for more.
I opened my coat, tucked her against my chest for warmth, and ran back toward the village — to the feldsher, Marya Petrovna.
— Zina, where did you get this little one? — she asked softly, taking the child.
— By the tracks. She was just lying there in the snow.
— Abandoned, then. We must call the police.
— The police! — I pressed the girl closer. — She’ll freeze before they get here.
Marya Petrovna sighed, reached into the cupboard, and set out baby formula.
— This will do for now. And after that — what do you intend?
I looked at that tiny face. She’d stopped crying and burrowed her nose into my sweater.
— I’ll raise her. There’s nothing else to be done.
Behind my back, the neighbors hissed: “Lives alone, thirty-five, ought to have married long ago, and now she’s picking up someone else’s child.” I acted as though I heard nothing.
Some kind souls helped with the paperwork.
I named her Alyona. A life just beginning — bright as a new dawn.
The first months, I hardly slept. Fevers, colic, teething. I rocked her through the night and sang my grandmother’s lullabies.
— Ma! — she said at ten months, stretching her hands to me.
I wept. After so many years alone — suddenly, I was a mother.
By two, she was racing through the house after our cat Vasya, nosing into every corner.
— Baba Galya, look how clever my girl is! — I bragged to the neighbor. — She knows all the letters in the book!
— At three? Truly?
— See for yourself!
Galya pointed from one letter to the next — Alyonka named each without a miss. Then she lisped the tale of the Hen Ryaba.
At five, she started kindergarten in the next village. I hitched rides to get her there. The teacher shook her head in amazement — she read fluently, counted to a hundred.
— Where did such a smart child come from?
— The whole village raised her, — I laughed.
She went to school with braids down to her waist. Every morning I plaited them and tied ribbons to match her dress. At the first parent meeting, the teacher came up to me:
— Zinaida Ivanovna, your daughter is extraordinary. Children like her are rare.
My heart leapt. My daughter. My Alyonushka.
Years rushed past. Alyonka bloomed into a beauty — tall, slender, with blue eyes clear as a summer sky. She took prizes in the district Olympiads; the teachers spoke of her with warmth.
— Mom, I want to study medicine, — she declared in tenth grade.
— That’s costly, daughter. How will we manage the city, the dorm?
— I’ll win a budget place! — her eyes shone. — You’ll see!
And she did. I cried through graduation — with joy and with fear. For the first time she would go far, to the regional center.
— Don’t cry, Mommy, — she hugged me at the station. — I’ll come every weekend.
Of course, she didn’t. Studies swallowed her whole. She came once a month, then even less. But she called every day.
— Mom, anatomy was brutal today! And I aced it!
— Well done, love. Are you eating properly?
— Yes, Mom. Don’t worry.
In her third year, she fell in love — Pasha, a classmate. She brought him home: tall, steady. He shook my hand firmly and met my eyes.
— Good lad, — I approved. — Only don’t let your studies slip.
— Mom! — Alyonka bristled. — I’ll graduate with honors!
After university, they offered her a residency. She chose pediatrics — she wanted to treat children.
— You once nursed me back to life, — she said over the phone. — Now I’ll save others.
She came to the village less often — shifts, exams. I didn’t begrudge it. Youth, the city, a new life.
One evening she phoned out of the blue. Her voice was odd.
— Mom, can I come tomorrow? I need to talk.
— Of course, dear. What’s happened?
— I’ll explain when I’m there.
I hardly slept. My heart knew trouble.
She arrived pale, eyes sunken. Sat down, poured tea — her hands shook so much the cup rattled.
— Mom, some people came to see me. They said… they’re my biological parents.
The cup slid from my fingers and shattered on the floor.
— How did they find you?
— Connections, acquaintances — I don’t even know. The woman cried. Said she’d been young and foolish. Her parents forced her to give me up. She’s been sick with guilt all her life. She searched.
I was silent. I had waited for this day — and dreaded it.
— What did you tell them?
— That I’d think. Mom, I don’t know what to do! — she burst into tears. — You’re my real mother, my only one! But they’ve suffered all these years, too…
I held her, stroked her hair like when she was small.
— Suffered, did they? And who left you out there in winter by the rails? Who didn’t wonder if you’d live?
— She said she put me by the switchman’s hut, counting on him to come by to check the tracks. Only that day he was ill…
— Lord have mercy…
We sat, folded around each other. Dusk thickened at the windows. Vasya brushed my shins, meowing for his supper.
— I want to meet them, — she said a few days later. — Just to talk. To know the truth.
My heart knotted, but I nodded.
— That’s right, daughter. You have the right to know.
They arranged to meet in a city café. I went along and waited in the next room.
Two hours later she came out. Her eyes were swollen, but her gaze was steady.
— Well? How was it?
— Ordinary people. She was seventeen. Her parents threatened to throw her out. The father — my father — didn’t even know. She hid it. Later she married another man and had two more children. But she didn’t forget me.
We walked through a spring city washed in lilac scent.
— They want to be in my life. To introduce me to my brothers and sisters. My biological father… he’s alone now. When he learned about me, he cried.
— And what did you decide?
Alyonka stopped and took my hands.
— Mom, you’ll always be my mother. You raised me, loved me, believed in me. That won’t change. But I want to understand them, too. Not instead of you — just to know myself more fully.
Tears prickled, but I smiled.
— I understand, my love. And I’ll be with you.
She hugged me tight.
— She thanked you, you know. For saving me, for bringing me up. She said I became more than she could have given me then — a frightened girl with no support.
— That’s not the point, Alyonushka. I simply loved you. Every day. Every minute.
Now Alyonka has two families. She met her brothers — one is an engineer, the other a teacher. She keeps in touch with her biological mother: calls, the occasional meeting. Forgiveness wasn’t simple, but my daughter is stronger than most.
At Alyonka and Pasha’s wedding, we sat at the same table, that woman and I. We both cried watching the newlyweds’ first dance.
— Thank you, — she whispered. — For our daughter.
— And thank you, — I answered. — For entrusting me with her fate.
Today Alyonka works in the regional children’s hospital, healing little ones. When her own daughter was born, she named her Zina — after me.
— Mom, will you babysit? — my daughter laughs, placing the baby in my arms.
— Of course. I’ll tell stories and sing lullabies — just like I did for you.
Tiny Zinochka curls her fingers around mine and smiles with her toothless mouth — exactly as Alyonka did years ago, when I first held her and understood: this was destiny.
Love doesn’t choose whom to call its own. It simply is — as boundless as the sky over the village, as warm as a midsummer sun, as enduring as a mother’s heart.