When I opened the door that rainy afternoon, the last thing I expected to find was two soaked little girls: a baby wrapped in a blanket who had seen better days, and a seven-year-old with the most determined eyes I’d ever seen.

“Mrs. Martinez?” the older girl asked, trembling.

“Yes… who…?”

“I’m Luna. And this is my sister Estrella,” she said, clutching the baby to her chest. “Daddy used to say her name when… when he was on the phone with Mommy.”

My stomach lurched. *Dad.*

“Wait, your daddy is…?”

“Roberto Martinez,” she blurted out, and began to cry. “But he’s gone now. And so is Mommy. The orphanage is… I don’t want to say it, and the woman there was ugly, and I found a piece of paper among Mommy’s things with this address and the name ‘Patricia’ and…”

The baby started crying too, as if she understood the gravity of the moment.

I froze in the doorway. *Roberto.* My ex-husband. The man who had left me three years ago to “find himself.” Apparently, he’d found another woman and two daughters in the process.

“Please,” Luna whispered. “We have nowhere to go. Mom said you were… you were a good person. That Dad talked about you sometimes.”

*A good person?* I wanted to laugh. I wanted to close the door. I wanted to call someone, anyone. But what I did was look into those pleading eyes and see two little girls who were completely innocent.

“Oh my God,” I murmured. “Come in. You’ll catch a cold.”

I let them in. Luna left a trail of water on my Persian rug. The baby was whimpering.

“Are you hungry?”

Luna nodded so forcefully I thought her head would fall off.

While I heated up soup and prepared a bottle (thank God my neighbor had just had a baby and had left me some emergency supplies), I tried to process the situation. My ex-husband’s mistress’s daughters. In my living room. Soaked. Orphaned.

*My therapist is going to have material for years.*

“How did you find the exact address?” I asked as Luna devoured the soup like she hadn’t eaten in days. She probably hadn’t.

“There was an envelope. Mom kept letters. One said ‘Patricia Martínez, 247 Los Álamos Street, apartment 3B,’” she recited from memory. “I asked a lot of people for directions. A man on the subway helped us. I told him I was her aunt.”

“You came by subway? With a baby? From where?”

“From the San José orphanage. It’s…” she bit her lip, “far away.”

*On the other side of the city.* This little girl had crossed the city with a baby in her arms.

“Luna, that’s very dangerous.”

“It was more dangerous to stay there,” she said with a seriousness unnatural for her age. “Mrs. Remedios was going to separate us. She said no one wants to adopt two sisters together.”

A lump formed in my throat.

The baby finished her bottle and looked at me with those enormous eyes. She had the same dimple in her left cheek as Roberto. It was unsettling and touching at the same time.

“Look, Luna,” I began, not quite knowing what to say. “This is a very… complicated situation. Your dad and I…”

“I know you were his wife before,” she interrupted. “Mom told me when she got very sick. She said you were the only good person in Dad’s life. That if anything happened to us…”

Her voice broke. This seven-year-old girl was being braver than I was.

“Okay, okay,” I said, awkwardly hugging her. “No one’s going to separate you tonight. Tomorrow… tomorrow we’ll see what to do.”

“Are you going to send us back?” she asked, panicking.

I looked at her little face, dirty with tears and dirt. I looked at the baby who had fallen asleep in my arms. I thought about Roberto, who had been a mediocre husband but, according to this little girl, at least had been a present father. I thought about the mistress who kept my address as a last resort. I thought about how absurd it all was.

“Not tonight,” I finally said. “Tonight you’re going to sleep in a warm bed, you’re going to eat well, and we’re going to dry those clothes.”

Luna hugged me so tightly I almost spilled my soup.

“Thank you, Aunt Patricia.”

*Aunt Patricia.*

Two hours later, they were bathed, dressed in makeshift pajamas (my smallest t-shirts), and lying in my bed. Luna refused to let go of her sister’s hand.

I called my best friend, Andrea.

“You’re not going to believe what just happened.”

“What? Did you win the lottery? Did you meet someone?”

“Something like that. Roberto’s mistress’s daughters showed up at my door.”

Silence.

“WHAT?”

I told her everything. When I finished, Andrea burst out laughing.

“This only happens to you, Patricia. Only to you. And what are you going to do?”

I glanced toward my room, where two little girls were sleeping for the first time in who knows how long without fear.

“Honestly, Andrea, I have no idea. But tomorrow… tomorrow I’ll call a lawyer. And maybe a social worker. And definitely my therapist.”

“Are you going to help them?”

I sighed.

“Roberto was a terrible husband, but those girls aren’t to blame for that. And if their mother thought I was good enough to entrust her daughters to me…”

“You’re too good, Patricia.”

“Or too foolish. Time will tell.”

That night, lying on the sofa, I heard Luna singing a lullaby to her sister. The same lullaby I used to sing when I dreamed of having children with Roberto. The irony was almost poetic.

“Aunt Patricia,” Luna whispered from the doorway, “can I ask you something?”

“Of course, dear.”

“Do you also think it’s our fault? That Dad left you?”

My heart broke.

“Come here,” I made room for her on the sofa. “None of this is your fault. Your existence isn’t anyone’s fault. Do you understand?”

She nodded, but she still looked insecure.

“Things between your dad and me broke up long before you were born. And you know what, Luna… maybe it all had to happen this way so that today, at this moment, you’re safe here with me.”

“Like fate?”

“Like fate,” I smiled. “Now go back to bed. We have a lot to figure out tomorrow.”

She kissed me on the cheek and ran back.

As I drifted off to sleep, I thought about how absurd life is. Just a week ago, my biggest worry was whether to renew my gym membership. Now I had two little girls in my bed, one with my ex-husband’s last name and another who would probably take it too.

My life was officially a soap opera.

But for some reason, as I listened to the quiet breathing of the two girls in the next room, I felt something I hadn’t felt in years: a purpose.

Maybe fate had a twisted sense of humor.

Or perhaps, just perhaps, these two little souls had arrived exactly where they were meant to be.