Only plastic cards she could not use, a business card with a phone number, and a coin worth almost nothing.
Tears filled her eyes.
All for nothing.
She had risked everything. She had stolen for the first time—and ended up with nothing.
She thought of her mother. The mattress. The fever rising hour after hour.
And she felt more helpless than ever.
She was ten years old—and carrying the weight of the world on her small shoulders.
For illustration purposes only
No child should ever feel that way.
No child should go to sleep wondering whether their mother will still be alive the next morning.
But that was Julie’s reality—and it was crueler than any nightmare.
For a moment, she considered throwing the useless wallet into the gutter.
What was it worth now?
Cards she could not use. A coin not even worth a single painkiller.
But just as she raised her hand in anger, something caught her eye.
In a small transparent compartment, there was a photo.
Julie gently pulled it out.
And the moment she saw the face in the picture, her entire body froze.
Her blood ran cold.
Her breath stopped.
It was her mother.
Mireille—young, smiling, with long braids and a radiant expression.
But it was unmistakably her.
Julie knew that face by heart. It was the face that bent over her every night to sing her lullabies. The face that looked at her with love, even during the hardest days.
It was her mother.
Julie sat there for a long time, the photo trembling in her hands, unable to understand why a wealthy stranger—a man she had just stolen from—had a picture of her mother in his wallet.
It made no sense at all.
A thousand questions swirled in her mind.
Did he know her mother? Was he family? Had her mother hidden something from her all this time?
Julie didn’t understand.
But she knew one thing.
She had to return the wallet.
Not only because it was right—but because she needed to look that man in the eyes and ask him one question:
“Why do you have my mother’s photo?”
But there was a problem.
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