“I guess so.”
Suddenly, Maria shot up from her chair, sweeping the documents onto the floor.
“So what?!” she exploded. “What difference does it make what her reasons were?”
Alex bent to pick up the papers, but she stopped him with a gesture.
“I was one year old, Alex. One! She was twenty-five. Who do you think suffered more?”
“Maria, try to understand…”
“No, you understand!” She paced the office like a caged tiger. “A child’s trauma doesn’t care about adult motives. I don’t care if she was saving us or getting rid of us.”
“But she didn’t have a choice.”
“There’s always a choice,” Maria snapped. “She chose the easy way out—to get rid of us. And then she lived her life in peace for twenty years.”
“But she was looking for us…”
“Not hard enough!” Maria sat back down, crossing her arms. “I don’t want to see her. And I don’t want you to tell her anything about me.”
Her voice was as cold as ice. Alex knew he had lost this battle, for now.
That evening, Alex sat at home, the documents spread across his table. Each paper told a piece of the story, but fitting them together into a single, coherent picture felt impossible. Logically, his mother had saved them. A group home was better than being sold to traffickers. But emotionally, twenty years of trauma, pain, and feeling abandoned couldn’t just be erased. His head said one thing, his heart another. And somewhere in between was a truth he couldn’t quite grasp.
Alex stood up and walked to the window. The city below was alive, people rushing home to their families, to those who were waiting for them. He had a family, too. He had one then, and he had one now. But how could he piece it back together? He made a decision: tomorrow, he would go to the bank and tell his mother the truth. He would tell her he knew everything: about his father’s illness, the debts, the collectors. He would show her the documents. And he would look her in the eyes when she realized she had been found. He didn’t know exactly what he would say yet. But he couldn’t stay silent any longer.
The streetlights came on, and Alex saw his reflection in the glass. A man who had spent his whole life looking for his mother. And he had finally found not only her, but the truth. The question was, what to do with that truth now. What was about to happen in that bank would change everything. A mother and son were about to come face to face.
The numbers on the digital clock glowed in the dark: 3:27 a.m. Alex lay awake, the file of documents in his hands. The pages rustled in the quiet of the night like autumn leaves. He read and reread the papers, stared at the old photos, trying to assemble the puzzle of his past.
A faint memory surfaced: their last day at home. His mother was crying, packing their things into a small suitcase, whispering through her tears, “Mommy loves you. So, so much.” Back then, three-year-old Alex hadn’t understood. He thought they were going to visit their grandmother, just like she had promised last week. Maria was asleep in her stroller, unaware that her life was about to change forever. Now he understood: his mother was saying goodbye. She knew she would never see them again. The thought pierced his heart.
Alex got out of bed and went to the window. Outside, the sky was slowly lightening as the city began to wake. Somewhere out there, just a few miles away, another person was awake, also remembering that day. Today, he would give her the chance to explain. The chance to tell her truth after twenty years of silence.
The phone rang at 6:30 a.m. Alex grabbed it, thinking it was his alarm, but his sister’s name was on the screen.
“Maria?” he said, surprised. “Why so early?”
“I was up all night thinking about what you told me.” Her voice was strained, like a taut wire. “I couldn’t sleep.”
Alex sat on the edge of the bed, pressing the phone to his ear. The morning sounds of the city drifted in through the window: the hum of traffic, the voices of pedestrians.
“All I remember is the feeling of being abandoned,” Maria continued quietly. “The cold, strange hands, the institutional smell of the group home. But if the story about the collectors is true…”
“What if we’ve been wrong about her, Alex? Do you want to see her?” he asked carefully, afraid to scare away the fragile hope that was just beginning to emerge.
“No,” Maria answered quickly. “Not yet. I’m not ready.”
“But if you do meet her?”
A long pause. In the distance, a bus hissed to a stop.
“Tell her I’m not angry,” his sister finally said. “Just not ready. Maybe later, after I’ve had time to process all this.”
Alex felt something inside him begin to thaw. Maria was taking the first step toward reconciliation, even if it was only in her thoughts.
Two envelopes lay on his desk like two different fates, two paths, two possible futures. The first contained childhood photos from their years in the group home: graduations, birthdays, small achievements, little moments of joy amid great pain. The second held the documents detailing the debts and threats from 2004. Proof that his mother was a victim, not a villain.
Alex tried to rehearse his speech in the mirror but realized that words couldn’t be planned. In conversations like this, it wasn’t logic that mattered, but feeling. He put on his best suit—a dark, conservative navy, as if for the most important business meeting of his life. He took the journal with his unsent letters to his mother—maybe he would show it to her, if the conversation went well. The briefcase clicked shut. Alex glanced at the clock: 8:30. Time to go.
In the elevator, the mirrors reflected a man who had been preparing for this day for twenty years without even knowing it. Today, everything would be decided: either a family would find its way back to each other, or it would be lost forever.
The car started on the first try, as if it understood the gravity of the moment. The bank wasn’t open yet, but Susan was already walking along the sidewalk toward the employee entrance. Alex sat in his car across the street, watching her move: slowly, wearily, her shoulders slumped, her gaze fixed on the ground. Twenty years of loneliness had left their mark. She looked older than her years, as if she were carrying an invisible weight that grew heavier with each passing day…
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