UNCONDITIONAL

Esther

That little girl they saw painting all alone in the orphanage...
John and Kate never imagined their lives would change this way when it comes to adopting. Just like the story shows, Kate, who suffered from alcholism in the past and John, her husband, were waiting to have a baby named "Jessica" who would be their third child. Unfortunatelly, things didn't go as they expected they would be and the baby died in Kate's womb days before giving birth.
It is a tragic and traumatic situation, really tragic. Losing a child you were expecting is a sad and a hard thing to overcome. Both were emotionally impacted, but the one who suffered the most was Kate.
After that, she was going to teraphy to accept the fact that her baby was born dead and to help stop the frightening nightmares she used to have after the stillborn.
They have two more children, Daniel, a preteen who is around 12 years old, and Maxine (Max) who is around 5 years old and was born almost completely deaf. She uses hearing aids and speaks sign language to communicate. Both children have a great brother and sister relationship, Daniel likes to go out with his friends and also playing videogames. While Max prefers to draw and spending time with her mom.
They were a happy family, but there was a missing piece.
While Kate was dealing to overcome the baby issue, she also felt the need to take a child into their home. John was the one who suggested adoption, and both agreed that it would be a good idea that may could help them both to overcome that situation.
They passed the homestudy and were "legally" elegible to adoption, but Kate was not sure at all and she kept worrying about that she may was not prepared yet to take the next step. Helped by her psychologist, she took strength and went with John to the local orphanage, "Saint Mariana's Home for Girls", where their future adoptive daughter was waiting for them.
Esther is a 9 year old girl, who is described as highly intelligent and very mature for her age. She has great artistic skills, and also great manners. She has an educated and large vocabullary, accompanied by the cutest Russian accent.

They felt attached to her the first day they met her, she seemed to be the "perfect girl" for them, with a big sense of sensivity and with a great need of love.
She had a traumatic past as well, born in Russia and adopted by a family who bought her to America, who later died in a fire where Esther barely go out.
This way and with all the fixed papers, they decided to take her home.

Once home, she seemed to connect so well with the family members, specially Max, who wanted to have a sister from long ago. They both enjoyed together. We can't say the same about Daniel, who was a little jealous of Esther for having all the attention for her, he didn't welcome the girl properly neither.
A day after Esther arrived, the family prepared her a "welcome party" to welcome her to their family and to make her feel like one more.
Esther was soo excited about it and she looked so happy opening her presents, she lyed in her father's arms hugging him to show him how thankful she was for the presents.
Everything seemed "happy", and the parents's happiness came back again.
They were so excited to have a new member in their family, Esther was such a different girl who dressed old classical clothes and weared ribbons in her neck and wrists that never takes off.
Her first days at school were not so good, some classmates messed up with her because of her clothes, which made her feel mad and upset. She lives the school problems all alone and doesn't tell anyone.

One day after school, Daniel was playing with a paintball gun, shooting some toys he put outside in a wood table, suddenly, a pigeon posed on it, making Daniel feel like a tentation of shooting it. He shot the pigeon and hurt it so bad, after this he felt horrible, because after all he was just playing and didn't wanted to hurt it. Soon Esther and Max appeared, Esther and Daniel had a conversation about what to do with the pigeon, Esther suggested to kill it to stop its suffering, making Daniel so shocked about Esther's thinking. He couldn't do it so Esther took a rock and threw it to the pigeon, killing it.
Afrer that, Daniel's perspective of Esther changed, and run away from there. Max witnessed everything.

A day later, Esther had an incident at school, a girl named Brenda bullied her so bad, throwing away her bible and laughing at her, when Esther went down to take all the bible pages from the floor, the girl touched her neck with the intention of taking her ribbon/collar. That was the drop that spilled the glass, Esther jumped and started screaming like there's no tomorrow while everyone at school were looking at her. She had a panic attack due to the stress of that situation.