My eyes filled, but this time it wasn’t from grief. It was from the strange, aching joy of seeing a life I never planned become something beautiful.
Last night, we sat on the porch watching the sunset bleed into deep purple. Sophie leaned her head on my shoulder. Ethan stretched out on the steps, long legs crossed at the ankles, the same boy I once carried off a plane now looking like a grown man.
I thought about Alicia, somewhere out there counting what she’d lost and what she’d been forced to pay.
“I think she regrets losing the money more than losing you,” I said finally. “And that tells you everything you need to know.”
Ethan nodded slowly. “You know what’s strange? I’m not even angry anymore. It’s like she’s just… nobody. A stranger who happened to give birth to us.”
“That’s healthy,” I told him.
Sophie squeezed my hand. “Thank you for being our real mom,” she said. “For choosing us when you didn’t have to.”
I squeezed back, my chest so full it almost hurt. “You saved me, too,” I said. “I was drowning when I found you. You gave me something to swim toward.”
Ethan’s voice was gentle. “You’ve been paying us back ever since. Every single day.”
We sat there in peaceful silence, three silhouettes against a fading sky. Somewhere, Alicia was learning to live with the consequences of the choices she’d made. But on that porch, in our slightly shabby house with the old oak tree out front, we had everything that truly mattered.
Alicia abandoned her children twice: once on a plane, and once when she tried to buy them back.
But she will never, ever be remembered as their mother.
That title is mine. And I earned it.
