My boyfriend left me when I was pregnant because his mother didn’t like me. I’ve raised my son alone for 17 years. Today, I ran into his mother. She burst into tears. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, her voice trembling, “I’ve been looking for you all these years.”

“Then…” he said, his voice breaking, “he fell into a terrible depression. He dropped out of school, he abandoned his friends. I tried to fix what he’d destroyed, but it was too late. He didn’t want to see me. He barely spoke. And a year later…” He swallowed, trying to stifle his sobs. “A year later… he died. A motorcycle accident. He was alone.”

My breath caught in my throat. A thick silence enveloped us.
He was dead. The father of my child. The boy who left me crying on a park bench, telling me he couldn’t handle it. The same one who never came back, not a call, not a message. He… had been gone for sixteen years.

His mother covered her face with her hands.

“I’ve lived with this guilt every day of my life. And when I finally mustered the courage to look for you, I didn’t know where to begin. I lost track of you. You moved to a different neighborhood, a different job… I didn’t know if I wanted you to find me or if I was terrified you would.”

I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t. Part of me burned with anger. Another part… was simply exhausted.

But something changed. A door that had been closed for over a decade had just swung open.

That night I couldn’t sleep. I sat at the kitchen table, with a glass of water I didn’t drink, staring into space while listening to the building’s nighttime noises. My ex-boyfriend’s mother’s confession kept replaying in my head, like a carousel I couldn’t stop.

My son came home late from a school meeting. I watched him walk in: tall, thin, with that calm smile that always managed to soothe my world. I didn’t know whether to tell him what had happened. I didn’t know if I had the right to keep it to myself, but I also didn’t know if he wanted to carry that burden.

“Mom, are you okay?” he asked when he saw how serious I was.

“I saw your paternal grandmother today,” I blurted out, before I could change my mind.

He blinked in surprise. He knew almost nothing about his paternal family. I had explained the basics to him when he was younger: that his father had left and that I didn’t know anything about them anymore. Because it was the truth. So, yes: I never lied to him. I only had half the story.

He listened attentively as I told him everything that had happened at the market. Every word. Every tear that woman shed. Each confession shattered my version of events.

When I finished, he rested his arms on the table and took a deep breath.

“And how do you feel?” he asked.

The question took me by surprise. I expected him to be angry, to ask questions about his father, to try to find someone to blame. But no. He asked me. And that gesture, so simple, so mature… broke me.

“Confused,” I admitted. “Furious, too. I don’t know what to do with all this. I don’t know how… how to forgive something like this.”

“You don’t have to forgive anything if you don’t want to,” he said calmly. “But maybe you need to heal the wound.”

Heal it.

Yes. He was probably right.

Two days later, my ex-boyfriend’s mother asked to see me. I hesitated a lot before agreeing, but I did. We met in a quiet café. She was carrying a thin folder with yellowed papers.

“This is for him,” she said, handing me the folder. “Photos, letters… things his father wanted to give him someday, but never dared. I’ve kept them all these years. I don’t deserve for you to hear this, but… I do think he deserves for his son to know something about him.”

I didn’t know what to say. Continue reading…