…heart beat fast against mine, and I felt her shoulders shake with quiet sobs.
“I didn’t know if you’d come,” she whispered into my neck, her voice small and cracked with emotion.
“I didn’t know if you *wanted* me to,” I whispered back, my own words nearly lost in the lump forming in my throat.
We stood there, mother and daughter, clinging to each other on that cold Ontario sidewalk like we were afraid letting go might break the spell.
Eventually, she pulled back just enough to look at me. Her eyes were glassy, rimmed red. “I read your letters,” she said. “All of them. He said you stopped trying, but you didn’t. I found them when I was packing.”
My breath caught.
“You read them?” I asked.
She nodded. “Every word.”
There was a silence again, but this one felt softer. A pause, not a break.
Then she reached for my hand and tugged me gently inside.
The house was warm, smelled faintly of cinnamon and laundry. Lived-in. Cozy. There was a photo of her and a boy I didn’t recognize on a small side table, beside a steaming mug of tea she must’ve forgotten about.
She led me to the couch and sat down, pulling her legs underneath her like she used to when she was little.
“I was angry for so long,” she said, brushing a piece of hair behind her ear. “But I think… I think I was also scared. It was easier to believe you didn’t care than to face the idea that maybe you *did*, and I’d been wrong.”
I sat beside her, reaching out slowly—carefully—like touching a memory.
“I should’ve told you why I left him,” I said. “I thought I was doing the right thing. Protecting you. But all I did was make you feel abandoned.”
She looked down at her hands. “He told me you gave up on us. That you didn’t want to be a mom anymore.”
I closed my eyes. The ache in my chest returned, sharp and familiar. “That was never true. I never stopped being your mom. Not for a second.”
Her eyes filled again, and this time, when she leaned into me, it felt like coming home.
We stayed like that for a while, wrapped in the hush of healing.
Later, she showed me her garden, tiny and frost-covered, and the art projects she’d started. We laughed, a little stiffly at first, but it came easier the more we talked.
By evening, I called Brad from her porch. “She hugged me,” I said, barely able to get the words out.
“I knew she would,” he said softly. “Tell her I said happy birthday.”
“She remembers,” I said. “She never forgot me.”
And for the first time in two years, I felt like I could breathe again.
Maybe healing wasn’t loud or instant. Maybe it started in the quiet moments—on porches and old couches and airport sidewalks—when two people dared to reach for each other again.
Maybe all it took was a birthday card… and a little bit of hope that refused to die.
