“What is a child without roots?” I whispered. “A nobody. A gh0st with a physical form, but no place to belong.”

“So you’ve always felt like a gh0st?” Miller asked, stirring his coffee in my pr!stine, modern kitchen.

I looked at him—my only friend, the one who knew my entire truth. The man who helped me find her. The one who once carried me in her womb and then cast me aside like an unwanted draft.

My first cry had meant nothing to her. All my adoptive parents ever remembered was the note pinned to a cheap baby blanket: “Forgive me.” Just one word. That was all the woman who had brought me into the world had given me.

Luna Petrick and Gilla Smith—an elderly, childless couple—found me one chilly October morning.

They had opened their door and discovered a crying bundle. A fragile, abandoned newborn.

They had the decency not to send me to an orphanage, but Luna only had enough love to accept me out of obligation.

“You live in our house, Sandara,” she would repeat each year on the anniversary of the day they found me. “But remember, we’re strangers to you, and you to us. We’re only fulfilling our duty as human beings.”

Their apartment became my cage.

I was given a corner in the hallway with a folding cot. I ate alone, after them, finishing off their cold leftovers.

My clothes came from flea markets, always two sizes too big. “You’ll grow into them,” my foster mother explained. But by the time they fit, they were already falling apart.

At school, I was nothing but an outcast.

“Foundling.” “Stray.” “Rootless.”

Whispers followed me wherever I walked.

But I never cried. Why would I? Instead, I stored everything.

Stored strength. Stored rage. Stored determination.

Every shove, every sneer, every cold glance became fuel.

At thirteen, I started working—handing out flyers, walking dogs. I hid my earnings beneath the floorboards.

One day, Luna found them while mopping the floor.

“Ste@ling?” she asked, holding the crumpled bills. “I knew it—the apple doesn’t fall far…”

“It’s mine,” I replied calmly. “I earned it.”

She thr3w the money onto the table.

“Then you’ll pay. For living here. For food. You’re old enough now.”

By fifteen, I worked every spare moment outside school.

At seventeen, I got accepted into a university in another city.

I left with a single backpack and a box holding the only connection to my past—a newborn photo taken by a nurse just before the woman who birthed me disappeared.

“She never loved you, Sansa,” Luna told me before I walked out the door. “And neither did we. But at least we were honest about it.”

In the dorm, I lived crammed into a small room with three other girls.

I survived on instant noodles, studied obsessively, aiming for only top grades, only scholarships.

At night, I worked the late shift at a 24-hour store.

My classmates laughed at my worn-out clothes.

I didn’t hear them.

I only heard one voice inside me: “I’ll find her. I’ll show her who she thr3w away.”

There is nothing worse than feeling unwanted.

It gets under your skin…

Twenty-five years later

I was no longer the ghost-child, living off scraps and spare affection.

I was now Dr. Sandara Aylen. A published behavioral neuroscientist, speaker, and founder of a research center dedicated to child abandonment trauma. Irony, right?

I’d bought a house near the coast. White walls. Floor-to-ceiling windows. Silence. My fortress.

Miller—my research assistant and closest friend—had helped me build it all. He understood the cracks I carried.

We never spoke about love. Or relationships. Or family. Those were locked doors in my mind, labeled do not enter.

But one rainy Tuesday, that door burst open.

My housekeeper had quit suddenly. Her mother fell ill, and she had to fly overseas. I didn’t panic—I never panicked. I simply contacted a discreet agency and requested a replacement.

The next morning, she arrived.

A woman in her early fifties, head bowed, hands folded. Faded floral dress. Nervous smile.

“Miss Aylen?” she said quietly.

I nodded. She stepped inside and set her bag down carefully, as if the house might break under her presence.

“I’m Maris. Sent by GentleHands Agency.”

Maris.

I froze.

It was such a rare name. One I hadn’t heard in decades—but had seen once. On the back of that photo. Scribbled faintly in rushed handwriting: “Maris. 6 lbs, 4 oz. October 12.”

My breath caught.

She didn’t recognize me, of course. Why would she? I was no longer the baby she left on a stranger’s porch.

I kept my face still.

I watched her clean—her hands gentle, her eyes soft, her hums tuneless but calm.

She never asked questions. Never looked me too closely in the eye.

For days, I didn’t sleep.

I combed through her documents, confirmed her name, her background. She’d worked at diners, laundromats, as a caretaker. No fixed roots. Nothing extraordinary.

Except… she had no other children.

No family.

No home of her own.

Something inside me ached. And throbbed. And trembled.

Until one evening, I asked her, “Do you have any children, Maris?”

She paused. Her hand lingered over the dish towel.

“I did,” she said. “A long time ago.”

My chest tightened.

“What happened?”

She turned, her eyes glistening, but her voice steady.

“I was seventeen. I had her alone. No money, no help. The father disappeared. I thought I could do it, but she kept crying… I lived in a shelter. The staff told me she needed more than I could give. I made a choice.”

“To abandon her,” I said quietly.

She flinched. Just a little.

“Yes.”

“Do you regret it?”

She looked at me, really looked—for the first time.

“Every single day. I don’t sleep at night sometimes. I imagine she’s happy. I tell myself a good family took her. That she had a better life than I could’ve given. But I’ll never know. That’s my punishment.”

I stood there, trembling.

Miller, who had come over to drop off some documents, caught my eye. His face said everything. Now is the moment.

I pulled out the old photo.

Placed it gently on the counter.

Her fingers shook as she picked it up.

Then her lips parted. Her knees gave out.

“No,” she whispered. “No, no, no…”

I didn’t touch her.

I didn’t comfort her.

I just stood there.

“I’m Sandara. I’m the baby you left.”

Her cries were the kind of sound that only guilt can make—raw and gasping and animal.

She curled into herself on the kitchen floor.

I still didn’t move.

“You worked in my home for a month and never even looked at me properly,” I said. “You didn’t even recognize my face.”

“Because I didn’t think I deserved to,” she choked. “I’ve never stopped praying for forgiveness.”

I sat down across from her.

“Well, you left a note. Remember?” I said. “One word: Forgive me.”

She looked up.

I let out a long breath. My hands trembled as I reached for hers.

“I don’t know if I forgive you yet, Maris,” I said honestly. “But I needed to look you in the eye. To see if you were sorry. And you are. That’s a start.”

Three years later

Maris lives in a small cottage behind my house now. She grows herbs and bakes too much bread. She still works part-time, but not as my housekeeper.

We’ve talked. Laughed. Argued.

We’re not mother and daughter—not in the storybook way.

But sometimes, late at night, when she knocks on my back door and says, “I made soup, sweetheart,” something quiet inside me settles.

Life doesn’t give you neat stories. It gives you people. Some break you. Some rebuild you. And some—rare ones—do both.

If you’ve ever felt unwanted, know this: your worth isn’t defined by who let you go, but by how fiercely you hold on to yourself.

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