One rainy night, she brought me to my father’s home.
“She placed you in my arms and asked me not to let you end up in an orphanage if anything happened to her,” my father said. “The next morning, she was taken to the hospital. She died a few weeks later.”
I had misunderstood Robert’s words. My mother had not abandoned me. She had walked away knowing that she would never return.
“Why didn’t you tell me you weren’t my biological father?”
“Because I was afraid you would stop calling me Dad.”
I stared at the man I had considered cold and distant my entire life.
“But you never even told me you loved me.”
He lowered his head.
“I didn’t know how to say it. I only knew how to work, pay for your education, stay awake when you were sick, and watch from a distance to make sure you got home safely. I thought that was enough.”
Robert then approached us and placed an old photograph on the table. In it, my young father was holding a newborn baby.
Me.
“Emily,” Robert said, “this man was offered a highly paid job abroad back then. Instead, he sold his car, turned down the job, and raised a child with whom he shared no blood. When we asked why he was sacrificing his life for someone else’s baby, he said, ‘She isn’t someone else’s. She’s my daughter.’”
I could no longer hold back my tears.
Finally, I opened my mother’s letter.
“My dear daughter, if you are reading this, then Mark kept the promise he made to me. He may never know how to express his feelings with beautiful words, but you hold a larger place in his heart than anyone else. Don’t search for your father in the man who walked away. Your father is the one who chose to stay.”
I stood, walked over to him, and hugged him for the first time.
“Why did you decide to tell me everything today?”
He wiped his eyes and gave me a faint smile.
“Today marks twenty-two years since the first time I held you in my arms. I wanted to finally say, in front of my friends, what I could never bring myself to say when we were alone.”
“What is it?”
He took my hand again.
