FIVE WASTED YEARS

CHAPTER 7: THE FAMILY STILL WAITING

The meeting took place in a bare conference room at the child protection agency: a long table, plastic chairs, a whiteboard with half-erased notes from some earlier session. Pak Yusuf sat at one end. Dimas and Arga sat along one side.

At a quarter past ten the door opened and a woman came in, followed by an older man who held his cap in both hands. The woman was in her early thirties, wearing a simple headscarf the color of dried leaves. She carried a battered plastic folder pressed against her chest like a shield.

"Lestari," she said. "And this is my older brother, Mas Joko." She opened the folder with careful fingers and laid out its contents: a family card, birth certificates, a creased photograph. "I'm Alif's aunt. On his father's side."

For two years, she told them, she had searched for her nephew through every channel she could find. Hospitals. Police stations. Social services. Mosques that ran orphan programs. Every trail ended in the same place: a polite official telling her the child had been placed in a care facility, and that no further information could be disclosed.

Pak Yusuf slid a photograph across the table toward her. A recent one—Alif at the press conference in his little pressed shirt.

Lestari looked at it, and her face crumpled. She cried without a sound, one hand over her mouth, her brother's hand resting heavily on her shoulder.

When she could speak again, she told them about Bima. He had survived the warehouse fire, but not for long. The smoke had damaged his lungs, and complications set in. He died a few months later in a hospital bed in Bekasi. "Before he died," Lestari said, "he made me promise. Find Alif. Make sure he doesn't grow up not knowing where he came from." She wiped her face with the end of her scarf. "I've been trying to keep that promise ever since."

Arga listened with a tangle of feelings he couldn't separate. He had always thought of that night as one dangerous operation among hundreds. Terrible, yes; Fajar's death had haunted him for months. But he had filed it away, the way you had to file things away in his line of work, or you'd never climb into the truck again. He had never imagined it would come back like this—walking into his own home, sitting at the center of his own broken marriage.

And he realized, too, that whatever he decided now would shape the future of a five-year-old boy who had never asked to be part of any of this.

"I don't want to snatch Alif away from anyone," Lestari told Pak Yusuf. She had straightened in her chair; her voice was steady now. "I just want the chance to know him again. To make sure his rights as part of this family aren't simply ignored." She was holding the old photograph so tightly its edges bent: a younger Bima, grinning, a toddler perched on his shoulders.

Pak Yusuf explained, gently but firmly, how it would work. Any reunion would happen in stages, with close attention to Alif's psychological state. No one—no one—would be allowed to force the child to choose sides. And no one would be permitted to use his life story for personal gain or for business.

His eyes rested on Arga for a moment as he said it, then moved on. Arga understood. The warning was meant for everyone.

Lestari agreed to every condition, though it was plain how badly she wanted to run to her nephew that very afternoon. Two years, Arga thought. She had waited two years. What were a few more weeks? And yet he could see in her eyes that every one of those weeks would feel like another year.

* * *

Across the city, in a penthouse office overlooking the Semanggi interchange, Rendra Wijaya was beginning to understand that Arga had found what he was never supposed to find.

He didn't call Arga. He texted Nadira.

*Take Alif out of town for a few days. Puncak or Bali, your choice. Call it a holiday. I'll handle everything.*

Nadira read the message twice, standing in the restroom of the foundation office. Her thumb hovered over the keyboard. It would be so easy to say yes. It always had been, with Rendra.

But below his message sat another, from Arga, sent an hour earlier. Short and plain, the way he always wrote.

*Alif's aunt has been found. She's been looking for him for two years. Please don't take him anywhere.*

She didn't reply to either.

That night, Nadira came to the house again. She didn't bring a suitcase. She didn't ask to move back. She stood in the doorway and asked only one question.

"Is she really his family? This Lestari?"

Arga brought out the documents—the copies Pak Yusuf had verified and stamped—and laid them on the dining table under the lamp. He explained everything: the fire, Bima, the promise, the two years of searching. And he told her that every decision from here on had to put Alif's interests first. Not hers. Not his. Not Rendra's.

Nadira read in silence. Then, slowly, she began to cry—great ragged sobs that seemed to come from somewhere very deep.

All this time she had told herself she was the only one who could save Alif. That without her, he'd have no one. And all this time there had been a woman in Bekasi knocking on every door in the city, refusing to stop.

Yet even as the guilt washed over her, Arga could see she wasn't ready to admit everything. Not yet. There was still something she was holding back, just behind her eyes.

Her phone rang as she was getting up to leave. She glanced at the screen and answered anyway.

Arga didn't hear all of it. Only Rendra's voice, low and tinny, leaking from the speaker. Only a few words. But he saw what they did to her. The color left Nadira's face so fast it was as though someone had pulled a plug. Her free hand gripped the back of the chair.

Whatever Rendra had said, it was a threat.

She hung up without a word. Without an explanation. And then she was gone, hurrying out into the dark, her footsteps quick and uneven on the porch tiles.