My boyfriend left me when I was pregnant because his mother didn’t like me. I’ve raised my son alone for 17 years. Today, I ran into his mother. She burst into tears. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, her voice trembling, “I’ve been looking for you all these years.” Who would have thought that knowing the reason would enrage me even more?

I never imagined that a simple turn around the corner at the market could shake up seventeen years of a carefully reconstructed life. I was rushing, my mind full of schedules, my son’s tutoring, and the bills I had to pay before the end of the month. Then I saw her. Unmistakable, even after all this time: the same neatly styled hair, the cold eyes that used to judge me from afar. But this time they weren’t cold. They were filled with tears.

I froze. The bag of vegetables almost slipped from my hands. She stopped too, as if someone had pressed a button that froze the world. And then something happened that I never would have imagined: she placed a hand on her chest, moved toward me with unsteady steps, and before I could react, she hugged me.

Her voice trembled:

“Forgive me… I’ve been looking for you all these years.”

My stomach lurched. Not with emotion, but with rage. An old rage, but still raw. Forgiveness? Now? After shattering my life when I needed support the most. After convincing her son—my boyfriend at the time—that I was just “a mistake” and that fatherhood would ruin his future. Her, the woman who had treated me like a threat, like an intruder. The same one who pressured him until he abandoned me without looking back, leaving me pregnant, scared, and alone at nineteen.

I pulled away abruptly.

“Looking for me? Why?” I asked in a whisper, trying to control the trembling that coursed through my body.

Her tears fell uncontrollably. “You don’t know what I did… you don’t know what happened afterward. I thought I could fix something, even just a little…”

People were starting to stare at us. I wanted to scream. I wanted to demand answers. I wanted to tell her I didn’t need anything from her, that I had raised a wonderful son without her money or her name, that I had survived loneliness, temporary jobs, exhaustion, and fear. But the words caught in my throat.

She took a deep breath, as if bracing herself for a confession that weighed too heavily.

“I had to tell him something… something terrible. I forced him to leave you. And then…” She broke off, unable to continue.

“Then what?” I insisted, feeling my heart pounding.

Her eyes, swollen from crying, searched for me desperately.

“Then I lost him. I lost him too.”

An icy silence enveloped us. And, for the first time in many years, I felt my anger about to explode.

I don’t remember ever feeling so many emotions mixed together at once: anger, bewilderment, an unexpected pang of compassion, and, above all, that old wound I thought couldn’t possibly hurt anymore. She was trembling, trying to maintain her composure amidst the growing murmur of onlookers watching us from the market stalls. I gritted my teeth. I didn’t want a scene. I didn’t want her pity. I didn’t want anything from her.

“Explain yourself,” I finally said.

She took a deep breath, like someone preparing to exhume an unbearable memory.

“The day he left you…” she began, “it wasn’t just because of what I thought of you. It was because I pushed him until he broke. I told him you weren’t ready, that you… that maybe you wanted to take advantage of him. I said a lot of horrible things. But that wasn’t the worst of it.”

I listened without blinking, trying not to let my emotions overwhelm me. But every word she spoke felt like a finger pressing on a bruise that never fully healed.

“What else did you do?” I asked with a coldness I didn’t even recognize.

“I threatened him,” she whispered. “I told him that if he took responsibility for you and the baby, I would kill myself.”

I froze. Literally frozen. I hadn’t expected that. I expected rejection, contempt, manipulation. But that sentence was on another level. I didn’t know whether to believe her, whether she was exaggerating, whether she was trying to justify the unforgivable. But the way she said it… her face… that kind of shame can’t be faked.

She continued:

“He panicked. He’s always been a sensitive guy, you know that. And when he saw me so distraught, when he thought I was capable of doing something like that…” She let out a sob and covered her mouth. “He begged me not to.” I assured him that the only way to keep me alive was for him to break up with you. To leave for good.

I felt nauseous. A bitter taste settled in my throat.

Seventeen years ago, I thought he was just a coward. Irresponsible. A grown man. I never imagined that behind his abandonment lay such brutal manipulation.

“And then?” I insisted, clinging to the last shred of strength I had left.

“Then…” he said, his voice breaking, “he fell into a terrible depression. He dropped out of school, he abandoned his friends. I tried to fix what he’d destroyed, but it was too late. He didn’t want to see me. He barely spoke. And a year later…” He swallowed, trying to stifle his sobs. “A year later… he died. A motorcycle accident. He was alone.”

My breath caught in my throat. A thick silence enveloped us.
He was dead. The father of my child. The boy who left me crying on a park bench, telling me he couldn’t handle it. The same one who never came back, not a call, not a message. He… had been gone for sixteen years.

His mother covered her face with her hands.

“I’ve lived with this guilt every day of my life. And when I finally mustered the courage to look for you, I didn’t know where to begin. I lost track of you. You moved to a different neighborhood, a different job… I didn’t know if I wanted you to find me or if I was terrified you would.”

I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t. Part of me burned with anger. Another part… was simply exhausted.

But something changed. A door that had been closed for over a decade had just swung open.

That night I couldn’t sleep. I sat at the kitchen table, with a glass of water I didn’t drink, staring into space while listening to the building’s nighttime noises. My ex-boyfriend’s mother’s confession kept replaying in my head, like a carousel I couldn’t stop.

My son came home late from a school meeting. I watched him walk in: tall, thin, with that calm smile that always managed to soothe my world. I didn’t know whether to tell him what had happened. I didn’t know if I had the right to keep it to myself, but I also didn’t know if he wanted to carry that burden.

“Mom, are you okay?” he asked when he saw how serious I was.

“I saw your paternal grandmother today,” I blurted out, before I could change my mind.

He blinked in surprise. He knew almost nothing about his paternal family. I had explained the basics to him when he was younger: that his father had left and that I didn’t know anything about them anymore. Because it was the truth. So, yes: I never lied to him. I only had half the story.

He listened attentively as I told him everything that had happened at the market. Every word. Every tear that woman shed. Each confession shattered my version of events.

When I finished, he rested his arms on the table and took a deep breath.

“And how do you feel?” he asked.

The question took me by surprise. I expected him to be angry, to ask questions about his father, to try to find someone to blame. But no. He asked me. And that gesture, so simple, so mature… broke me.

“Confused,” I admitted. “Furious, too. I don’t know what to do with all this. I don’t know how… how to forgive something like this.”

“You don’t have to forgive anything if you don’t want to,” he said calmly. “But maybe you need to heal the wound.”

Heal it.

Yes. He was probably right.

Two days later, my ex-boyfriend’s mother asked to see me. I hesitated a lot before agreeing, but I did. We met in a quiet café. She was carrying a thin folder with yellowed papers.

“This is for him,” she said, handing me the folder. “Photos, letters… things his father wanted to give him someday, but never dared. I’ve kept them all these years. I don’t deserve for you to hear this, but… I do think he deserves for his son to know something about him.”

I didn’t know what to say.

For the first time, I wasn’t crying. I wasn’t trembling either. I felt… at peace, even if it was a fragile peace.

“I don’t know if I can forgive you,” I said honestly.

“I know,” she replied, looking down. “I just want you to move on without that weight. The one I placed on you without any right.”

We said goodbye without hugs, without promises. Only with the feeling that a painful story had finally reached its end.

That night my son opened the folder. He looked at each photo with reverent silence. When he finished, he looked at me and said:

“Perhaps he didn’t have the chance to be my father, but… I did have the chance to have you.”

And I understood, at last, that although the past couldn’t be changed, we could choose what to do with its remains. And we chose to move on. Without resentment. Without borrowed blame. Only with the truth and the strength that had sustained us from the beginning.