PART 2
Mum looked up when we entered the kitchen, smiling as she dried her hands on a dish towel.
But her smile disappeared when she saw the envelope.
“Where did you find that?” she whispered.
“In the attic, Mum.”
She gripped the edge of the counter.
For a moment, I thought she might faint.
Then she quietly said, “Your father promised he’d destroyed it.”
My sister and I exchanged frightened glances.
“You knew about this letter?”
Mum shook her head.
“Not what was inside.”
She sat down slowly.
“After the accident, your father asked me never to open a particular box while he was alive.”
“Why?”
“He said some memories were too painful.”
I placed the envelope on the table.
“We haven’t opened it.”
Mum stared at her husband’s handwriting.
Then she touched the words, My angel.
“He always called me that,” she whispered.
Tears filled her eyes.
I pulled out a chair beside her.
“Maybe we should wait until your birthday.”
She nodded, but her hands continued trembling.
That evening, she barely ate.
Three days later, on her sixtieth birthday, we gathered around the kitchen table.
There was a small cake, three candles, and an empty chair where Dad should have been.
Mum opened the envelope.
Inside were several handwritten pages and a photograph we’d never seen.
It showed Dad sitting in his wheelchair outside the hospital, holding a newborn baby.
My sister leaned closer.
“Is that me?”
Mum shook her head.
“No. You weren’t born yet.”
My stomach tightened.
Mum unfolded the first page.
“My angel, everyone told you I had ten years, but there was something the doctors told me privately.”
Her voice broke.
I took the letter and continued reading.
“They warned me that the treatment giving me more time carried risks I never wanted you to feel responsible for.”
Mum covered her mouth.
Then I reached the final paragraph.
“I survived because you gave me reasons to fight, but there’s one thing I’ve hidden from you.”
Beneath the letter was a hospital identification bracelet.
The baby’s name wasn’t mine or either sibling’s.
Mum stared at it.
Then she whispered, “I remember that day.”
Her face went completely pale.
“Your father told me the baby hadn’t survived.”
read the entire P
“My mom refused to leave my disabled dad even when doctors gave him just 10 years to live — he defied the odds, and they had two more children. But after his death, we found a letter he’d hidden from her: “”My angel, I’m sorry I kept this from you…””
