It occurs to her just two days before it happens, when she stumbles upon a newspaper reminding her of the occasion, that as a good big sister she should help Brigitte with her present for Mother's Day. Seeing as the girl is just a tad bit too young to understand the concept of celebration, or of gifts, or how to make them, it likely falls upon her to pick up the slack. She thinks Mrs. Lindholm will appreciate it, and so will Mr. Lindholm by proxy.
What present should she give, though? Angela remembers she used to make cards for her own parents for such occasions. And buy flowers. Admittedly, thinking back on it, it was her parents' own money that she spent on said flowers, and shouldn't presents be more personal than that? Maybe a cake would be better. Yes. The ingredients may be bought with the Lindholms' money, but the finished product will not have existed without her input. No. Not just cake. She should do both. Brigitte won't be thinking of the nuances behind presents for years to come yet.
First, Angela prepares the card. Or, to be more specific, she prepares three and discards the first two due to the mess Brigitte makes in the process of employing her help in order to get a little handprint signature of hers. The cake she prepares at night, with kitchen windows wide open for the smell not to linger. The flowers she buys on her way back from school, unbothered to explain to the florist when he strikes up a conversation that she's neither little, nor a daughter. She buys potted forget-me-nots also. She's never had the money before.
At home, she makes sure to slip unnoticed into her room to put the potted flowers on her desk, and recover the cake and card she hid there at night. Next, she wakes up the sleeping Brigitte, who almost breaks out in tears at such cruel treatment before recognising the person responsible and giving Angela what she believes is a smile.
Carrying the girl in one hand while holding the flowers and the card in the other is a challenge due to her small posture, but she eventually makes it to the workshop door. The door she can't knock on.
"Mrs. Lindholm! Could you please come out?"
"Just a moment!" comes the muted reply, a few seconds before the door opens, revealing the puzzled-looking woman, her eyes taking in the sight.
"I helped Brigitte with her Mother's Day presents. Here" Angela helpfully explains, motioning to the gifts with her chin.
A second more passes before the words sink in, and a sunny expression takes hold of Mrs. Lindholm's face. Before long, they're all seated at the table, Brigitte on Angela's knees, the cake on their plates, and the flowers in a vase. It's there that her caretaker opens her card - with Angela watching intently for her reaction. It's only right. She can tell immediately something's wrong when the smile becomes strained on the woman's lips.
"Oh. I thought-" Mrs. Lindholm cuts off with a wince.
"Is something wrong?" Angela prods. It's a non-question. Obviously she did something wrong, and she needs to know what it is to make amends.
"No, nothing. Thank you for helping Brigitte, I just… I thought you had signed it too. I'm sorry for assuming."
Angela's mouth goes dry at the admission.
"Do you-" No. Obviously she wanted her to. Her reaction is proof enough. "Can I still sign it?"
If the woman looked surprised when she emerged from the workshop, she looks positively stricken now. It lasts all of a second before the smile from before returns to her lips, twice as bright.
"Of course." The words come out strangled, but Angela is beyond noticing in her anxious excitement. This is everything she's wanted. Everything she's worked for ever since Mr. Lindholm first came to the orphanage a world away. And though she'd hoped, she never expected either of the Lindholms to actually call her their daughter. They didn't give her their name, after all.
She hops off her chair, depositing Brigitte into her- into their mother's arms from her shaky own, and takes off with the card back to her room.
Not much actually changes in the Lindholm household that Angela can tell after that. Mrs. Lindholm treats her the same, and so does her husband. Maybe it's practice, seeing how many times Angela has had to adapt to big changes in her life by now. The refugee camps, Uncle, the orphanage, the Lindholms, Brigitte, and now this. It seems like some new challenge awaits around every corner of life for her to overcome. Honestly, things could stand to be a little more boring.
Brigitte learning to crawl, and then walk, for example, spells an era of the toddler venturing to follow her around the house. More often than not this means Angela room and the workshop, whereupon being barred entry the girl without fail starts crying, thus drawing Angela out to calm her down, and away from her work. It's annoying, but the Lindholms seem delighted, and therefore so does she.
Being left alone in the house is, likewise, a wholly novel experience, seeing as alone now usually includes a toddler left in her care. It's flattering, really. A sign that her caretakers trust her with their child unquestionably. Angela supposes it could also mean they trust she fears retribution that would fall upon her were harm to befall upon Brigitte, especially by her hand, but it's probably just trust that she will keep their child from seriously harming herself just as she does when they're home to see it. If Angela had a child, it would be a poor consolation that someone would go to prison if they were to, say, throw her baby into the fireplace.
The first few times they're left alone, she tries to treat just as she would any other day, but Brigitte is a greedy creature and whenever awake always requires some sort of stimulation. Angela's go-to, cartoons, turn out laughably ineffective in holding the toddler's attention for more than a few minutes at a time, and she quickly finds the girl demanding her attention from the other side of the living room sofa. She can't even fault Brigitte for this, the cartoons are as mindless as they come. She too would rather do chemistry homework than watch this drivel in her sister's place, and she knows how boring chemistry is! Too bad Brigitte can't actually contribute any.
"Alright." She turns to the girl, whose brown eyes bore into her own like drills. "If you don't want to watch cartoons, why don't you tell me what the product of oxidising… whatever this is, looks like." She shows the particle graph on her tablet to the child, who, for her part, smiles and gurgles in delight as if she's just been shown a magic trick, not busybody schoolwork. Truth be told, it's expected, and very much the usual reaction Angela gets from the girl whenever she appears to be giving something, anything, to her. The way Brigitte makes to grab the tablet is also expected.
"It's not food. You wouldn't like it." Angela explains at the betrayed look on the toddler's face as she draws back.
"Ngha!"
"I'm pretty sure I know a thing or two more about food than you. I don't get it. You don't even eat anything solid, why do you want to taste everything regardless?" Shouldn't there be some biological handle on this thing? It would do children wonder if they started to pack everything in their vicinity into their mouths only after they can even recognise the difference between a head of cotton candy and one of cabbage. It's incredible how the most intelligent species of the planet can also act so recklessly stupid. Ugh, evolution.
"Wait. Are you actually hungry?" She levels the kid with a searching look. Mrs. Lindholm left some sort of fruit mush to feed her child at around… an hour ago. Shit.
Angela puts the tablet away before standing up and pointing at the toddler with a single word. "Stay." Only for her words to immediately be disregarded as the girl clumsily makes to follow her, thus putting herself at risk of falling off the couch. "I said stay."
All the reaction she gets from that reminder is the child gleefully snorting as if told a particularly funny joke. With a sigh, Angela picks up the ever-growing burden the child presents for her, to carry her to the kitchen, where she deposits her down on the floor.
As the meal is heating up in the microwave, she props her back against the counter to observe Brigitte finding something of great interest on the tile before her. She wonders what would happen if she were to employ a laser pointer against the girl, perhaps even have it move around with the help of some simple machine so that she doesn't have to bother with it. The ding of the microwave interrupts her fantasy, prompting her to grab the plastic spoon and sit on the ground in front of the toddler after grabbing a paper towel. She's seen how the girl eats and doesn't care for washing the stains off the couch.
At least Brigitte eats without a fuss - it's one of the few things she does reliably regardless of who's handling her - and thankfully always grows sleepy afterwards, allowing Angela to deposit her under a blanket by her feet on the couch.
It's a good trick to learn, though not always useful as Brigitte does have her designated feeding hours, meaning she can't simply feed her until she falls asleep every time. What she does discover is that regardless of what she says to the child, she always listens with rapt attention. It doesn't matter whether it's her homework that she's reading aloud or a proper children's book, or a series of equations or even code. Brigitte will listen to it all for as long as it's Angela who does the speaking. Recordings, even her own, Angela discovers, do not work nearly as well, with the girl falling victim to boredom.
Mrs. Lindholm jokingly remarks one day that Brigitte seems to approve of their choice of sister for her. Angela supposes that is true enough, though at times she wonders if the girl hasn't got her mistaken for her mother, going by the way she follows Angela around rather than her actual mother.
Her learning to walk does not make matters easier.
When the time comes, it surprises absolutely no-one that Brigitte's first words aren't mamma or pappa, but Angela. Or- well. Some shortened, mangled version of the name that Angela and Mrs. Lindholm recognise only thanks to their months-long exposure to the toddler's babbling. That said, by the time they get the girl to repeat it when asked, it's clear enough that Mr. Lindholm recognises the name at once. Angela is not there when it happens, it's likely the reason why the needy child felt the need to utter the word.
"Should I be jealous?" Mrs. Lindholm asks upon relaying the news, and for an instant, Angela freezes, instinct momentarily overtaking her reasoning before she can reign her rampaging anxieties in. It's just a joke. Mrs. Lindholm isn't really jealous of her. She needn't worry. Just a joke.
She should reciprocate.
Her mouth opens without her mind catching up to the effort, leaving the air laden with pregnant silence. There's nothing in her mind to reply, nothing to lighten the atmosphere with, just a blanket of fog clouding her mind.
"I'm sorry." Mrs. Lindholm's words break up the clogging silence. "I shouldn't have said that."
Angela is disinclined to agree. If only she reacted like she should've they would both be laughing now, without the memory of this moment ever made to sour their days for however long it takes to dissipate.
She forces a smile onto her lips.
"It's alright. Where is Brigitte? I want to hear her say it." And she does, even if she'd rather go to her room to get her homework over and done with. But that's not something a good big sister would do, so Brigitte first it is.