For 15 years, Meg believed her mother had abandoned her. Then one day, she appeared unannounced, but Meg’s father threw her out, warning, “That woman is nothing but trouble.” After he stormed off, Meg read the note her mother had given her: “Meet me. I’m ready to tell you the truth.”
When the doorbell rang, I was expecting DoorDash, not the woman who left when I was three years old.
I’d ordered Chinese food because I was craving those little fried wontons. I was already digging in my pocket for tip money when I opened the door.
Instead of a delivery driver, there was a haunted-looking woman on the doorstep.
She started crying as soon as she saw me.
“Oh my God, Meg,” she breathed.
“Do I know you?”
“No, but I hope you will. I am your mother.”
Part of me already knew it was her. She had my eyes and my nose. But I couldn’t help wondering why she’d finally returned, after 15 years.
Did I even want to know?
I’d spent years believing my mom didn’t want me. She’d left without any explanation, according to Dad. I’d tried to ask questions about her, hoping to find some clue about her, but Dad always told me,
“There’s no point talking about ghosts, Meg. She made her choice.”
At that moment, the ghost was on my doorstep.
Heavy footsteps echoed in the hall behind me, snapping me out of my thoughts.
I didn’t even have time to blink before the woman quickly pulled out a pen and a scrap of paper, scribbling something down.
“Here, please take it, before your father sees,” she whispered.
I clenched the note tightly in my hand, crumpling it until it all but disappeared from sight.
A few seconds later, Dad appeared at my side, angrier than I had ever seen him.
“How dare you show your face here, after all these years?” he snarled. “Get out of here! Go back to whatever hole you crawled out of, Kayla.”
He slammed the door so hard that the narrow panel of figured glass beside it rattled.
“That… that was Mom, wasn’t it?” I asked.
“You stay away from her, Meg. I don’t know why she’s back, but that woman is nothing but trouble.”
He stomped off toward the kitchen. I waited until I heard him banging around in there. Then I slowly unclenched my fist, smoothed out my mother’s crumpled note, and began to read.
“Meet me at the diner just outside town. I’m ready to tell you the truth.”
I read the words multiple times. What truth could explain her absence?
I nearly jumped out of my skin when the doorbell rang again. That time, it was my wontons. I tipped the driver and set the bag down on the kitchen table.
“Did you get my chicken?” Dad asked, already removing takeout containers from the bag.
“Yeah. And the fried rice.”
One look at his face told me we wouldn’t be discussing what had just happened.
Not that I expected anything more. That was the man who’d raised me like a son, teaching me to fish, fix leaky pipes, and patch drywall.
Even as an adult, I still looked to Dad for guidance and stayed close to support him—he’d always been my best friend and mentor.
Meanwhile, the note felt like it was burning a hole in my pocket all through dinner. I picked at my food as my thoughts raced.
It hadn’t been easy growing up with only a father.
Dad was there for me through failed algebra tests and first dates, but he couldn’t show me how to do a dragon braid, apply makeup, or bake a pie.
I munched on a wonton and thought of the first (and last) time I’d painted my nails: the nail polish smeared all over my fingers, and I ruined it before it even dried.
I remembered the anger I’d felt at that moment.
I wished I could meet her just once so I could tell her how much she’d hurt me.
Finally, I had the chance to do that. Dad had told me to stay away from her, but how could I? That might be my only chance to confront the woman who’d left me. I deserved that much.
After dinner, I told Dad I was going to Sarah’s house to help her with a baby. I grabbed my keys and drove straight to the diner my mother mentioned in the note.
She was sitting in a corner booth. I slid into the seat across from her and cut straight to the point.
“I’m here. Now tell me why you left.”
“Oh, honey. I did it to protect you. My brother, Paul, got mixed up with some very bad people during his late teens. I cut ties with him, but one day, he was waiting for me outside my office building.”
“And?”
“My brother wanted me to help him with a scam at the company where I worked. But I refused. He wouldn’t stop and threatened to take you away from me. He had certain connections… the wrong kind of connections.”
“So you ran away?”
She shook her head. “I went to the police first, but they said they couldn’t do anything unless he acted first. They couldn’t arrest him for threats.”
“I didn’t know what to do. I went home that night, but Paul was waiting outside my office the next morning. That’s when I realized I’d have to do something drastic to protect you. So, I called the FBI. When I told them which company I worked for, they got very serious about the matter.”
Over the next hour, my mother told me how she’d spent the last few years working with federal investigators to help them build a case against Paul and the people he was working with.
“He was arrested last month,” she said. “That’s why I came back. It’s finally safe.”
I wanted to believe her. There was nothing in her body language to suggest she was lying, but words alone couldn’t erase years of pain.
“I missed you every second of every day, Meg.” She reached across the table like she wanted to take my hand, then pulled back. “I wanted to call. I dialed your father’s number so many times, but I couldn’t risk it.”
I stared at her for a long moment, trying to reconcile this broken woman with the selfish monster I’d built up in my head.
“I need time to think about this,” I said.
I took her number and just about ran out of there.
I didn’t sleep that night. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Mom’s face or heard her voice breaking when she talked about leaving me. I replayed everything she’d said, looking for holes in her story.
The next morning, I found Dad in the garage, tinkering with the lawnmower.
“Mom told me why she left,” I said.
He shook his head disapprovingly. “I told you to stay away from her.”
“She said her brother Paul threatened to hurt me, and that she left to protect me.”
His hand stopped moving. “So, she spun you the same story she told me. I hope you didn’t believe her.”
“What? You knew? But you always told me she disappeared without warning! No explanations. Did you lie to me, Dad?”
He set down his wrench and stood to face me. “She sent a letter when you were ten. Said she was helping the police with something and would come back when it was safe.”
“And you never told me? Where is it?”
“I burned it, Meg. I didn’t believe her, and I was so angry. You were still asking for her on your birthdays and Christmas… I couldn’t stand the thought of giving you false hope that she might come home.”
For the first time in my life, I saw past my father’s stoic exterior to the heartache that lay beneath it. He hadn’t just been protecting me; he’d been protecting himself from being hurt again.
All those years, I’d thought he was bitter, but he’d just been too scared to believe in someone who’d already left once.
“She wants to see me again,” I murmured.
“I clearly can’t stop you, so…”
Three days later, I met Mom at the park near the lake where Dad had taught me to skip stones.
“Nothing can change the past,” I told her, as I stared out at the water. “You left, and I spent my entire childhood missing you, and wondering what it was like to have a mom who taught me how to do my hair or helped me pick out dresses for school dances. I can’t tell you how much that hurts, even if I understand why now.”
“I know,” she muttered.
“But,” I said, finally looking at her, “I’d like to get to know you now. Slowly.”
She burst into tears then. “I’ll take it slowly, Meg. I’ll take anything you’re willing to give me.”
We started with coffee dates at neutral places. It was awkward at first, but the more we got to know each other, the easier it got. Then she asked if I wanted to learn to bake.
The first pie was a disaster. I burned the crust, and the filling was lumpy and wrong, but we laughed about it until we couldn’t breathe.
We went shopping together, too. We tried on ridiculous shoes and took selfies in dressing room mirrors, giggling like the teenage girls I’d always envied.
It wasn’t perfect, but it felt healing.
One evening, about two months after that first meeting at the diner, I came home from Mom’s place with a perfect key lime pie I’d baked all by myself.
Dad dropped his gaze to the pie in my hands. “Smells good. She always did make a mean key lime pie.”
In stoic Dad-speak, that meant he was finally ready to let go of the hurt, to stop being angry.
“Want a piece?” I asked.
He smiled. “I’d love one.”
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