“She grew into a good woman,” he continued. “Kind. Steady. We loved each other very much.” The older woman’s hands began to shake harder. “Did she… did she have children?” she asked.
“Yes. A daughter. Polly. She’s five. I bought the doll for her. That’s how I found the connection.”
“Why didn’t Susan come herself?” the woman asked, tears already running down her face. “Did she hate me that much?” “Susan can’t come,” Mike said quietly. “She was killed by a car two years ago. I’m raising Polly alone.”
The woman let out a broken sound and bent forward, sobbing. The grief hit her so hard Mike stood up fast, got her a glass of water, and opened the window for air. After a minute, she managed to steady herself.
“I’ve hated myself for that choice every day of my life,” she said. “Then tell me what happened,” Mike replied. “All of it.”
She nodded slowly. “I wanted out of this town. I trained as a seamstress and got a job at a factory in the city. They gave me a room in a dorm. Then I fell for one of the drivers. I thought we had a future.”
“When I got pregnant, he disappeared. Just vanished. I never saw him again. I couldn’t bring myself to end the pregnancy. But I had no money, nowhere to go, and no family willing to take me in with a baby.”
“Going back home felt impossible. My mother would’ve shut the door in my face. After Susan was born, I couldn’t feed her. I took her to the children’s home because I believed they could at least keep her alive.”
“Later I met my husband, Bob. We tried to find her, but we never got anywhere. We couldn’t have children of our own. After Bob died, I came back here. I’ve been alone ever since.”
