I spent my whole life mailing letters to the address tied to my missing mother, always clinging to hope—until I finally received a reply that devastated me.

I thought I understood what it meant to be abandoned until the woman I had spent my whole life writing to showed up at my door with a box in her hands and a look on her face that made me realize the truth might be worse than the silence.

I stood there with my hand on the doorknob, staring at her face and feeling like my body had forgotten how to work.

She looked older than the woman in the photograph, of course. Fine lines framed her eyes, and her hair was shorter, but it was her.

Or it was the woman I had spent my whole life imagining.