I tried to reach her.
But she was already pulling away.
Ruth went to prom without me.
She packed a bag.
She left.
Weeks passed.
Then months.
I wrote letters she did not answer. I sent messages she did not read. I learned how to live with a new kind of pain, one that comes from missing someone who is still alive.
Then one evening, my phone rang.
“Mom?” her voice was small.
She told me she had found the adoption file by accident while helping a counselor. Inside was a letter I had written years earlier, sealed and forgotten.
It was the prayer.
Not written as a bargain.
But as gratitude.
“I didn’t save you,” I told her through tears when we spoke. “You saved me. You taught me how much love my heart could hold.”
She came home.
Today, a photo hangs on our wall.
Three women sitting close together. Two daughters. One mother. Different beginnings. One family.
Love did not divide us.
It multiplied us.
