My mother had me at 17 and gave me up. At 20, I found her — heart pounding with hope — but she looked terrified.
“Forget me,” she whispered. “My husband can’t know. He’d leave.”
Her words crushed me. I walked away, shattered.
A year passed. Then, one rainy night, a knock came.
At the door stood a man in a suit. “I’m Daniel,” he said. “Your mother’s husband. She never told me, but I found the letters.”
Inside a box were birthday letters she’d written me every year, never sent.
The first one read: “I think of you every day. I loved you enough to let you go.”
Tears blurred my eyes.
“She’s in the hospital,” Daniel said. “She wanted you to have these.”
I found her there — weak, crying, smiling.
“You came,” she whispered.
And I knew: she hadn’t stopped loving me. She’d just been afraid.
