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beating.
    Dazed, he drove back up the forest track to his sister’s home. Leka met him at the door, taking the cap from his hands and turning it over.
    “Oh, God. Is this Isa’s?”
    Mik nodded and sank into a chair at the kitchen table and falteringly explained how it had come into his possession. Leka was quiet while he listened, as was his way. When Mik’s voice trailed off and he hid his face in his arms, Leka’s hand on his shoulder was the only answer his oldest friend could give.
    Later, when the haze of despair had lifted somewhat, Leka reasoned that maybe Isa had not been the lone ranger they thought. That when he fell in the field, perhaps an American comrade had seen fit to retrieve a token of his life and send it on to him. The CIA had eyes everywhere. It wasn’t that farfetched that they could’ve tracked Mik and the others all the way to Albania. If Leka was right, then maybe the Americans even knew about the clandestine evacuations of young Kosovan children. Indeed, it was the plight of one the infants they’d smuggled into Albania that had brought Mik away from his mountain-top seclusion in the first place.
    His soul ached as he recalled with painful clarity the image of Isa tending to the youngest charge in their care so long ago. Isa had cradled the baby girl for hours as Mik slept, slumped against him on the back of the cattle truck. That bitter winter night when they’d delivered the children to Doric and Rita, they’d believed they were leading them to a better life. Not so, it seemed—when spring had come around for a second time, word reached them that the baby girl had been left at an orphanage not far from Rea and Leka’s forest home.
    A few days later, Mik accompanied Leka and Rea into town. He glanced around as he drove through the tidy, undamaged streets. He’d spent so much time alone in the mountains he sometimes forgot that his memories of a broken Pristina were not how civilization was supposed to look.
    Distracted, he pulled the truck to a stop outside the orphanage. The building was utilitarian and bleak. He had every intention of waiting outside, but a glare from his sister persuaded him to stub out his cigarette—a habit he’d acquired helping Doric rebuild the roof of the mountain cabin—and follow her inside.
    He drifted behind Leka and Rea as a Catholic nun led them through the orphanage. He’d always pictured such places as loud and noisy, full of wailing and screaming infants, but it wasn’t so. The desolate eyes of the abandoned children haunted him as he passed their beds. They were so hollow and empty, they reminded him of his own reflection.
    “Mik?”
    Startled, Mik blinked and focused on his sister’s face. He hadn’t realized they’d come to a stop. “What?”
    Rea smiled a real, wide smile he hadn’t seen from her since the birth of her own child. “Mik, look. There’s someone who wants to see you.”
    Confused, Mik followed her gaze to a nearby cot. His heart shuddered. An infant girl stood with her arms outstretched to him. With her dark curls and defined features, she bore no resemblance to the warm bundle of bones Isa had soothed in the back of the cattle truck all those years ago, but somehow, Mik recognized the hazel gleam of her eyes.
    The rest of the world faded away. He reached down and lifted the girl from her bed. Thin, olive skinned arms locked around his neck, and suddenly, his soul felt like its axis had shifted. The girl fixed her solemn eyes on him and he stared right back. The sensation of her in his arms felt right, like she’d belonged there all along. With Rea and Leka standing resolutely on either side of him, there was no question that he would ever let go.
    It took a matter of minutes for Leka and Rea to sign some papers for the little girl and bring her home to live as one of their own. With times so hard, such adoptions were rare. The orphanage seemed to care little for her fate.
    Mik carried her all the way back to Rea and