A Child named Leah, in a Country named Germany, many, many years ago

I must have been about eight when a little girl by the name of Leah entered our lives and became part of our family.
They said she was my cousin but I knew that she really wasn't. They also told me to never speak about this to anybody or where she had come from.
None of it really made much sense because I had never heard of her before, nor did I know where she came from.

This whole affair was just another one of those secrets, and I knew that secrets needed to be kept.

I was told she had no father and no mother... and she was therefore going to be my little sister, at least for a little while.
I really didn't care about any of those details, it didn't matter to me at all... all I was interested in was that little girl, that little Leah, and the fact that she was going to be my sister.

Now my secret wishes had come to pass... I had a playmate, and I wanted to keep her close to me at all times.

I loved her so very much... but it did not last. One morning Leah was gone, she disappeared just as suddenly as she had come.

I was told that there had been a mistake... that she really did have a mother, but this mother lived far away, in a big wooden house with lots of other houses just like it, together with many other mothers and children and fathers and grandparents, and aunts and uncles... and a great big fence was around all of it.

And that's where Leah was now, to be with her mother again.