Then, one afternoon, someone knocked on my door — a young woman with a familiar softness in her smile. She introduced herself as my mother’s daughter, my half-sister, and said she had been searching for me. She told me Mom had passed away, and my heart quietly ached in a way I wasn’t prepared for. Then she handed me a small box wrapped with care.

Inside was a letter from my mother. She wrote that she thought of me often and regretted her choices, wishing she had found the strength back then to keep me with her. She hoped life had been gentle to me, even when she couldn’t be there. At the end, she wrote, “If life allows, I hope we meet again in kindness, not regret.” I closed the letter with tears in my eyes — not from anger, but from finally letting go of the question I’d carried for so long.