But I knew my mother hadn’t just *walked away.* She loved me too much for that.

Years went by, and her absence became something I carried quietly. My father remarried. I finished school, went to college, and built a life. But every milestone felt slightly incomplete. I always imagined her in the audience — proud, smiling, clapping.

Then, twenty years later, when I was planning my own wedding, she came back into my life in the most unexpected way.