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Twenty Years Passed
Time moved faster than I could have imagined.
The babies became toddlers.
The toddlers became schoolgirls.
The schoolgirls became teenagers.
And suddenly, they were young women.
They graduated from high school.
They went to college.
They built lives of their own.
And through all those years, Kayla never came back.
Not once.
No birthday card.
No Christmas call.
No apology.
Nothing.
I sometimes wondered whether she thought about them.
I wondered whether she ever regretted her decision.
But I stopped waiting for answers.
Jennifer and Lizzie were my family.
That was enough.
Then came their twentieth birthday.
They decided to spend the day with me.
I wanted it to be special.
So I baked a beautiful cake.
I prepared all their favorite foods.
There were decorations in the kitchen and presents waiting on the table.
For the first time in years, I wasn’t thinking about the past.
I was simply happy.
I looked at those two young women and felt overwhelmed with gratitude.
I had raised them.
And somehow, despite everything, they had grown into kind, intelligent, strong people.
Then someone knocked on the door.
The Woman Standing Outside
I wasn’t expecting anyone.
When I opened the door, I froze.
Kayla was standing there.
For a moment, I didn’t recognize her.
She looked completely different from the young woman I remembered.
She was dressed in expensive designer clothing.
A diamond watch glittered on her wrist.
Her perfume filled the hallway.
Everything about her appearance seemed designed to communicate one thing:
She had gotten the life she wanted.
She looked at me as though the past twenty years had never happened.
Then she walked inside.
Without waiting for an invitation.
Without asking how the girls were.
Without apologizing.
She simply removed her shoes and coat and called out their names.
“Jennifer? Lizzie?”
My hands were trembling.
The girls came into the room.
And when they saw their mother, both of them went completely still.