“That’s impossible!” I cried. “I raised my child myself! What are you talking about?”
My father sighed, his voice weak with age.
“We adopted a baby who was left at our gate… eighteen years ago.”
My body went numb.
“Left… at the gate?”
My mother retrieved an old diaper from a cabinet. I recognized it instantly—the one I had wrapped my newborn in.
It felt like my heart was being stabbed.
Through sobs, she explained,
“After you left, his father came looking for the child. You were already gone to Saigon. He drank, caused trouble, then disappeared.
Eighteen years ago, one morning, I opened the door and found a newborn lying there. Only this diaper. I knew it was connected to you. I thought something terrible had happened to you… that maybe you were gone forever.”
Her voice broke.
“We failed you once. But we couldn’t abandon this child. We raised him as our own. We never struck him. Never mistreated him.”
I trembled.
That diaper—I had hidden it carefully. No one knew about it.
There was only one explanation.
My daughter’s biological father had another child… and abandoned him at the very place he knew I’d been thrown out.
I looked at the girl—the child I hadn’t given birth to, yet who looked so much like me.
She asked shyly,
“Grandpa… why are you crying?”
I pulled her into my arms and broke down like never before.
My parents dropped to their knees.
“Forgive us. We were wrong. Please don’t blame the child.”
I looked at them, and twenty years of resentment quietly dissolved—not because they deserved forgiveness, but because I understood something deeper.
This child needed a family.
And I needed to let the past go.
I wiped my tears and said,
“I didn’t come back for revenge. I came back to reclaim what’s mine.”
I took the girl’s hand and smiled.
“From now on, you’re my sister.”
Behind us, my parents cried like children.
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