Meeting You Again

Chapter 12

Ayla's POV:

December 29, 2021 (about a month after Ayla bumped into Tariq)

My love life at this time could be said to be...nonexistent. Although I had hopes of having a family one day, it was always one day it will happen. I was turning into a full blown academic career woman, caring only for her schooling! But is there anything wrong with that? I didn't think so.

At this moment, I was at New Haven Orphanage home, playing with the children there. And I was absolutely having my work cut out for me.

"Alex! Stop! You cannot eat the cookie batter, it has raw eggs in there!"

I've been visiting local orphanages in City S for the past few years. It started after mom got her divorce from Mr. Silber, and then Lyra and I graduated college. Lyra left for City S and she was quite busy with both her bank job as well as Milo. Oh right, I didn't give you an update on who Milo was! Milo was Lyra's son.

Well...adopted son.

Unfortunately after Esme gave birth to Milo, she passed away due to complications in labor. Her parents wanted to give Milo up for adoption, but Lyra and Jace were dead-set on not allowing that. Milo was all that was left of Esme, their dear baby sister. How could they leave him up for adoption? After a torturous and grueling court battle, Lyra finally got custody of Milo and left shortly to City S. It was difficult to be a mom to a newborn baby while working, but Lyra wanted to do it. I tried helping her as much as I could but she wanted to do this mostly on her own.

With Lyra's hands being so full and mom being busy expanding her bakery business, I was bored to death -_-'. Sure I was busy with my program, but I couldn't be working all the time. I felt lonely so I started to visit New Haven Orphanage weekly to play with the kids there. Soon, I couldn't stop. The kids here, wonderful. That's all I can say about them. They were so cute and so well-behaved. Bitterness spread through my chest everytime I realized they had no one to take care of them other than the Orphanage director.

Gosh, can you guess what today was? December 29, Corinna's Birthday. It was hard to believe that it's already been 3 years since Corinna was brought to the Silber villa. So much has changed since then.

Anyways, we didn't need to pollute our brain thinking about those people. New years was only 2 days away, so I bought the kids some new clothes and toys. In a moment of pure spontaneousness, I brought up the idea of everyone baking together. The two options were either cupcakes or cookies. After the kids argued for a bit, they decided to make chocolate chip cookies. Mostly because they lasted longer and we could make more of them.

The kids were acting as fantastic helpers. I was nearly about to max out my phone camera storage because it was full of images of these kids! Some were helping to crack the eggs, others were measuring the ingredients, and others were cutting the cookies into different shapes. It was all going systematically until...Alex.

He started to sneakily eat some of the cookie dough, and seeing him, others followed. Sigh, they were only kids after all. They had an indestructible nature to want to eat everything, even dirt.

I tried discouraging them, worried that they would complain about stomach aches later on. But they didn't listen. Right when I was about to yell an ultimatum, I heard laughing from behind me. Turning around, I saw Mrs. W, the Orphanage Director, approaching. Seeing my tensed face she couldn't help but burst into laughter.

"Don't worry Ayla, the kids will be fine. I haven't seen them have this much fun in a long time. Thank you so much for coming today."

"Oh don't be so polite Mrs. W. I love these children. I'm just glad they're taken care of well here." Mrs. W was an old, friendly woman. I loved her nearly as much as these kids. When I first met her a few years ago, I wanted to do some investigating on her to make sure there was no shady business going on in the orphanage. Oh how wrong I was.