Although I was skeptical, I stepped aside and motioned for her to follow me to a quieter corner near the window, away from the tables.
“Could we talk privately?”
“You have no idea what your daughter is hiding from you,” she said, her voice trembling. “For a long time.”
I looked at Lily across the room. She was laughing with her best friend and Ethan’s younger sister, completely unaware.
“I’m her biological mother,” the woman added.
The room fell away.
She continued, “There’s something terrible from her past, and you need to know the whole truth.”
“You have no idea what your daughter is hiding from you.”
“She found me two years ago,” the woman explained. “She tracked me down after college. The orphanage still had some of my contact information in their records, and she convinced them to give it to her.”
I stayed silent.
“She reached out,” the woman said. “Asked questions. I told her why I had left. I explained everything.”
“Everything?” I asked.
“She found me two years ago.”
“Yes, look, I was young. I was terrified. After the accident, I didn’t know how to raise a disabled child. Everyone kept looking at me as if I were some monster, or as if they pitied me. I couldn’t do it.”
“So you walked away,” I said.
“I thought it was the best thing,” she replied. “Better than dragging her down with me.”
I let out a slow breath.
“So you walked away.”
“She stopped replying to my messages a few months ago. Said she didn’t want anything to do with me anymore. But before that, she mentioned her wedding in passing. She said it would be here.”
“Why are you telling me this now?”
“Because you deserve to know. And I am her mother and deserve to be in her life. I carried her for nine months.”
“But I’ve carried her ever since,” I replied.
She flinched.
“Because you deserve to know.”
“She built her life without you, learned to walk again, got into college, and found love. All of it without your help.”
Her eyes brimmed with tears, but I didn’t stop.
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