Thrown Out Pregnant at 15, I Returned 20 Years Later to a Secret

“So… now you regret it?”

My mother’s expression tightened.

She looked as if she wanted to say my name, but nothing came out.

Then the young girl beside her reached over and grabbed my mother’s hand.

“Grandma… who is she?”

Grandma.

Everything inside me stopped.

I looked at the girl again.

Eighteen.

Approximately the age I had been when my own life was torn apart.

My mind raced through possibilities, but none of them settled into anything that made sense.

My mother was her grandmother.

The girl looked exactly like me.

And I had been gone for twenty years.

Suddenly, the reunion I had spent so long imagining no longer mattered in the way I had expected.

My anger was still there.

So was the memory of the rain.

So was my father’s voice telling me I was no longer their daughter.

But another question had pushed past all of it.

I looked from my mother to my father.

Neither of them volunteered an explanation.

The young girl kept holding my mother’s hand, watching all three of us with growing confusion.

I could hear my own breathing.

I had come back believing I was finally the one carrying the surprise.

I thought the shocking part of that day would be my parents seeing what became of the daughter they had thrown away.

I thought I understood every important fact about my past.

They had rejected me.

I had survived.

I had raised my daughter.

I had built a life without them.