幸好，我还有另外一个家_大学英语阅读

幸好，我还有另外一个家

In the moments of shock and horror that followed, my relatives all gathered in the hospital, and I went home with only a close friend for company (Jason followed a while later). We spent that night on our own. I was numb; it had all happened so fast. I could barely think beyond the immediate moment.

The next morning, my grandfather, aunts, and uncles were still immersed in their own mourning. Shell-shocked[5] as I was, I knew I had to let people know what had happened. I saw my mother’s address book lying where she had set it only days before and started dialing. One of the phone numbers I found was Mike’s.

Even though he lived about an hour away, it felt like he was there in an instant. As soon as he walked in, he took charge―and took care of Jason and me. Among other small kindnesses, he gave me a credit card and said, “Why don’t you buy something to wear to the funeral?” He gave me permission to be a 17-year-old―to focus on the more mundane[6] issue of what I was going to wear instead of weighty adult concerns.

Generally, when children are orphaned, a family member comes forward to take them in. This didn’t happen in our case. Everyone had a good reason, I suppose. My mom’s father was too old to assume responsibility for us; my mother’s sister and her husband had three kids of their own and weren’t able to take in any others; her other two siblings were both single and worked long hours. The guardian named in my mother’s will was a babysitter that none of us had seen in 15 years. But I can tell you this: Abandonment, even for very good reasons, feels awful. It was heartbreaking and terrifying to have lost the person we loved most and then to be set adrift. Months passed and it felt like our relatives could offer no reassurances. The only news we got was that if Jason and I remained without a guardian, we would have to enter foster care[7]. Our mother was gone, and there was nothing we could do to save ourselves.