I almost closed the door in her face because I genuinely thought she was selling something.
She looked older than I imagined. Smaller too. The brownies were sliding around inside one of those cheap plastic grocery containers from Walmart.
My wife recognized her immediately though. I’d shown her one childhood photo years earlier after too much whiskey one night.
My mother kept trying to smile while talking, like she’d rehearsed this in the car.
She said she’d searched for me for years. Said leaving me was “the hardest thing she ever did.” Said she finally found me through one of those ancestry websites my daughter uses.
Then she asked if she could meet her grandkids.
That part made something in me shut off instantly.
Not because I hated her anymore. Honestly, I stopped hating her around twenty-five. I just stopped building imaginary versions of her in my head.
I asked why she really came.
She started crying before answering.
Turns out she has kidney failure.
Three of her other children weren’t matches.
That’s when I noticed she never once asked about my life either. Not my job. Not my kids’ names. Nothing.
Just whether I’d “consider testing.”
The brownies were store-bought too. I checked after she left because for some reason that detail bothered me more than anything else.