Then the lawyer began explaining custody rights and documentation. Somewhere in all the legal language was the devastating truth: she was his biological mother, and she now had the means and legal standing to claim him.
I tried to argue. I tried to reason. I begged her to at least let him choose.
But the law was not on my side.
I will never forget the sound of his crying as they led him to the car. His face pressed against the window, his hand raised toward me, tears streaking down his cheeks.
I stood on the porch long after the car disappeared.
And then they were gone.
No calls.
No letters.
No photos.
Nothing.
The silence that followed was louder than any argument could have been. I kept his room exactly as he left it — the posters on the wall, the worn baseball glove on the shelf, the blanket folded at the foot of the bed.
I dusted the room every week. I opened the windows in spring so it wouldn’t smell stale. I talked to him in my prayers as if he could somehow hear me.
Years passed.
Birthdays came and went. I baked a small cake each year anyway.
On his eighteenth birthday, I told myself not to hope.
Hope had become too dangerous.
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