A pile of birthday cards slid across the table.
The first one had a cartoon ladybug on the front.
My hands stiffened as I opened it.
The message inside was written in my mother’s handwriting.
“I hope Simone has a wonderful fifth birthday. Tell her I think about her.”
That was all.
No “I love you.”
No request to speak with me.
No promise to visit.
She wrote about me as though I were a neighbor’s child she vaguely remembered.
Every card had been addressed to Dad.
Every message referred to me from a distance.
“I hope she enjoys school.”
“Tell her happy birthday.”
“I’m glad to hear she is doing well.”
I opened one after another, searching for something that felt like a mother.
I found nothing.
“You don’t have to continue tonight,” Mr. Lewis said.
“Yes, I do.”
Beneath the cards was a stack of canceled checks.
They had been written after my mother disappeared.
The first payment was larger than nearly three months of our rent. More checks followed, covering almost two years.
All of them were tuition payments.
All of them carried my father’s signature.
My mind filled with old memories.
Canned soup.
My patched winter coat.
The year Dad worked through Christmas.
The night he pretended darkness was an adventure because the electricity had been disconnected.
“He left college,” I said slowly, “and then paid for hers?”
Mr. Lewis nodded.
“Your father had promised to help her finish her education before you were born. When she contacted him, he believed that keeping that promise might give her the stability she needed to return.”
I stared at him.
“She took his money and used it to build a new life.”
