Aunt Gabriella moved in with her son, Nick, after Lauren’s mother passed away following a long illness. Two years earlier, Lauren had also lost her father. For a while, Lauren had been living alone in the home left to her by her parents. But one summer morning, her aunt and cousin appeared at her doorstep.
With no intention of leaving, Aunt Gabriella and Nick quickly began to establish their own rules in the house. The first thing they did was to sell off whatever remained of Lauren’s parents’ belongings. Lauren tried to stop them, showing them her mother’s will, which clearly stated that everything belonged to her.
But Aunt Gabriella snatched the will from her hands, tearing it into pieces. Nick, tall and thin, laughed and rubbed his hands together nervously, still recovering from a hangover. Lauren, filled with anger and hurt, ran out of the house, rushing into the woods to her father’s old gatehouse.
She climbed onto the creaky bed there and wept for hours, cursing her fate. While her classmates were preparing for graduation and the excitement of their new lives, Lauren had no money for any of it. The funds her mother left weren’t enough for her to move to the city or attend college, and she was stuck living under the same roof as her aunt and her perpetually drunk son.
Lauren had no one else to rely on. Her aunt was her only relative, and her neighbors and acquaintances couldn’t offer much help.
The only option was to wait, to hope that things would eventually change. But time passed, and Lauren’s life remained the same.
Two years later, she was still living with Aunt Gabriella, enduring her constant criticism. Her aunt assigned all the housework to Lauren. From dawn until late at night, Lauren cooked, cleaned, did the laundry, ironed clothes, and ran errands.
After another argument with her aunt, Lauren went to the gatehouse in the woods for some peace. She collapsed onto the bench, tilting her head back.
Clouds drifted lazily across the sky, and a gentle breeze carried them away. Lauren found herself longing to soar with them. As she daydreamed, she unintentionally dozed off, only to be startled awake by a loud cry.
Fear surged through her. There was no one nearby, so it couldn’t have been a person’s voice. The cry was something wild—pitiful, echoing through the air.
It grew louder, turning into a roar, then a shriek that sounded especially haunting in the evening quiet. Lauren sat frozen, listening to the sad, eerie call of some unknown forest creature. Eventually, the cry died down.
But then came the rustling of leaves and a loud crack. Cautiously peeking around the corner, Lauren was shocked to see a small bear cub waddling toward the gatehouse. The cub was clumsy, stumbling and sniffing everything around him as he moved closer.
When he reached the rainwater tank, he drank deeply and then sat down, looking at Lauren with curious eyes. She spoke gently to the cub, “So it was you who was calling out, huh? Who hurt you?” The cub wiped his face with his paw, sneezed, and then crawled over to her, nudging her leg with his nose.
Lauren quickly ran to the gatehouse, grabbed some sugar left by one of the hunters, and offered a few pieces to the cub. He devoured the treat eagerly and roared again, sounding much happier this time. “Where’s your mother, little one?” she asked, nervously glancing around.
“Are you alone?” The cub yawned, climbed onto the bench, and curled up underneath it. Soon, Lauren could hear him snoring softly, falling into a peaceful sleep.
After sitting there for a while, she left a few more pieces of sugar next to the cub and headed home. Her brief encounter with the little bear lifted her spirits, and the ongoing arguments with her aunt seemed trivial in comparison. The bear cub, which she later named Maggie, became her quiet companion.
By the end of summer, Maggie had grown, but she still lived near the gatehouse, where Lauren would visit regularly to feed her. Aunt Gabriella, who had suffered a heart attack earlier in August, had become less strict. She now avoided conflict to keep her health in check.
As time went on, Lauren’s life began to improve. She believed that her kindness to Maggie was the reason for the positive changes. Every time Lauren visited, Maggie would come out from the woods, approach her, and lie at her feet in contentment. After eating the food Lauren brought, Maggie would lick her hands in gratitude before waddling off, only to return later.
One day, however, Lauren went to check on Maggie and noticed the cub wasn’t there to greet her. She called out but received no response. Growing anxious, Lauren remembered the hunters she had seen in the store the day before. Fearing something had happened to Maggie, she hurried to the gatehouse, grabbed a raincoat, and set off in search of her friend.
After searching the woods with no success, Lauren heard a gunshot, followed by a muffled roar. Rushing toward the sounds, she tripped and fell down a slope, her arm scraping the ground. She ended up by a small lake, and there, she saw a strange and haunting scene: a man stood by the water, arms raised, while Maggie, the bear cub, lowered her head against him.
What had happened? Lauren didn’t know, but it was clear her connection with the little bear had led her to this moment.
