Later that evening, I sat with Mom and Dad in their living room.
The same room where I had played as a child while Rebecca watched through the window.
“Why didn’t you ever tell me?” I asked softly.
Mom wiped away tears.
“Rebecca made us promise,” she whispered.
“She said she wanted you to have a normal childhood, without any confusion or complications. She loved you so much, Maggie. She wanted to give you everything… a stable home, devoted parents, and her watchful love from next door.”
“She would come over sometimes, after you’d gone to bed, just to check on you,” Dad said.
“She never wanted to interfere, never wanted to complicate your life.
But she never stopped loving you.”
In the weeks after her passing, I struggled to make sense of it all.
I grieved for the mother I never knew was mine. For the time we lost.
For the moments that could have been.
But then, one morning, as I was going through Rebecca’s things, I found more letters.
Dozens of them.
Each one dated, chronicling my life through her eyes.
She had written about everything including my first steps, my first words, and my first day of school. Even the small moments I’d forgotten like the day I learned to ride a bike, the afternoon I came crying to her about my first heartbreak, and the morning she helped me get ready for prom.
That’s when I realized something profound.
I had been loved my entire life by two mothers.
One who gave me a home, and one who gave me life.
And while I wished I had known the truth sooner, I knew Rebecca had never really left me.
She had always been there.
And through these letters, through the memories we shared, and through the love she poured into every moment we had together, she always would be.
I now keep that wooden box on my bedside table.
Sometimes, late at night, I open it and look at that old photograph of my young, pregnant mother, and I whisper, “Thank you for loving me enough to stay.”
Source: amomama
