She looked over at the window where a child about three sat and watched as the rain pelted the window. He was searching for someone out in the rain, but he couldn’t find that person. Glancing over at her, he smiled but soon frowned as no one came out of the rain. She sighed, hoping it wouldn’t end up this way. He sat there everyday, staring out into the world through a simple piece of glass. She felt his sadness grow each day.

“Aidan, come away from the window. No one will be coming here today,” she said. Aidan acted as if he couldn’t hear her, and she wasn’t sure what he could do anymore. All he did was sit there and watch for someone to come. He would only watch harder on rainy days because the person loved the rain most of all.

“Sam, they come. Come back to me,” Aidan said after a while. He looked over at her with his sadden, clear, blue eyes. They reminded Sam of clear blue water that you could see everything under the surface. Everything in those eyes wasn’t hidden. She loved Aidan as much as an aunt could, but she couldn’t be a replacement for the ones he lost. “Ma and Da come soon. They come soon. Sam, they come soon?” Aidan looked at her with those eyes that spoke a pleading boy waiting and watching for his family.

“Sure. They’ll come. They promised you that they’d come back,” Sam said. She ruffled the little boy’s dark blue locks and got him to smile. When someone asked what was special about Aidan, she would always say that his smile was unmatched. He smiled kind of crookedly and not. There was only the small glint of teeth, but the most special thing about it was that it brought hope alive. “Let’s go play with the blocks until they come.” She always tried to get him away from the window, but every time she tried, he would become deaf to the world around him and stare out the window.

Aidan never use to see his aunt before. He once lived in another village, but one rainy night a year before, Sam’s little sister, Amanda, showed up at her home with Aidan and without Thomas, her husband. Amanda had begged Sam to take can Aidan without any explanation. When the older sister gave in, Amanda disappeared into the rain, and Aidan ran over to the window and stared out, without moving a muscle. Two months later, Sam found out where her sister went before Aidan’s birth and why she was came to her. It was because Thomas and Amanda were never supposed to have Aidan.

The organization that Thomas and Amanda worked for forbade the thoughts of relationship. They fixed the problem of the marriage between the two by giving them a lot of work to separate them. Thomas was the leader of a fighter squad while Amanda worked within the tracking squads. They rarely saw each other, so the organization backed off. Then, Aidan was born and kept hidden for two years before the higher-ups found out and put a bounty on Thomas and Amanda’s heads.

Aidan finally grew tired of the window as no one was going to come back for him that night. Sam opened up her arms as he walked over; he climbed into her lap and was hugged tightly. One thing that Sam learned over the months with the sweet little boy was that his eyes would became almost as clear as glass when he was about to cry. The tears fell as Sam began to rock him. He missed his mother and father so much that it was probably killing him inside. No child deserved this kind of life, Sam thought. She continued to rock, knowing that she lied to this child everyday, and everyday, he would sit and wait for two people that wouldn’t be home again.

“Da not coming, yeah?” Aidan said. He wiped away some of his runny nose with his sleeve before Sam got him a tissue. She couldn’t lie to him anymore. This was the first time he cried since the beginning, and that could only mean he was tired of waiting. She finally just shook her head and hugged him once more. “Thank you.” That single tiny whisper of a broken child made Sam realize that he would watch out the window until he understood that no one would be there for him ever. It would always be just Aidan and Sam because they had no one else.