“Three weeks before our wedding, Emma gave me a handmade card. She drew herself, her mother, and me holding hands. Underneath, she wrote, ‘Now we’re a family.'”
Emma nodded.
“I remember.”
“I showed that picture to my mother,” Mike continued. “She told me, ‘Remember, that little girl isn’t yours. One day, her real father will return, and she’ll forget you.'”
Mike’s mother, Helen, had passed away three years earlier. She had always believed that only biological children truly belonged to a man.
“Those words haunted me,” Mike admitted. “The first time Emma called me Dad, I was happier than I’d ever been. But afterward, I became terrified of losing her.”
Emma wiped her cheeks.
“So you rejected me before I could reject you?”
Mike nodded, crying.
“I thought I was protecting myself. Instead, I hurt the daughter who trusted me.”
My father stepped forward, leaning heavily on his cane.
