My father stood at the doorway, clutching the old photo to his chest, as if holding it might somehow bring back everything he had thrown away.
I looked at my son—the child I had raised through tears, sleepless nights, and silence. The boy who had become a man without bitterness. Because love had raised him. Not absence.
“Happy birthday to me,” he joked softly. “I finally met him. But you? You were enough. Always.”
And for the first time in eighteen years, I believed it.
I truly believed it.