My thoughts went everywhere at once: my father, who I’d always thought of as solid and boring in the best way. My childhood, suddenly featuring a ghost version of another child.
The young woman who had been moving around my mother’s house for weeks.
“She grew up with her mother alone,” Mom continued softly. “Your father gave them nothing. No money.
No visits. He told her he’d… take care of things, and then he came back to us and pretended she didn’t exist.”
I felt sick.
“When her mother died,” Mom said, “Alyssa went looking for answers. She found his name.
She found me. She knew he was gone. She just wanted to see the life he chose over hers.”
I sat back in the chair across from my mother and rubbed my temples.
“Does she want money?” I asked bluntly.
“From you. From his estate.”
Mom straightened a little. “She never asked,” she said.
“Not once. But when she told me everything, when she showed me the tests, I looked at her and thought: if your father had done right by her, she would have had the same security you did. So yes, I offered.
I’m giving her a portion of what your father left me.”
Anger flared in my chest—hot and irrational. Then a wave of guilt crashed in right after. I’d grown up with two parents and stability.
Alyssa had grown up with neither.
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