One Year Later
A year after the DNA test, we gathered again in the same park. Leo was home from college. Claire came with her husband and daughter. My parents joined us too. Andrew brought an old wooden box. Inside was a faded yellow ribbon.
I stared at it. It was the ribbon I had worn in my hair the day I told him I was pregnant.
“My mother kept a few things from before the accident,” Andrew explained. “Claire found this when she was going through her belongings.”
I touched the soft fabric. For eighteen years, I thought the past had disappeared without explanation. But it had been there all along — buried beneath fear, silence, and one terrible decision after another.
Leo stood beside Andrew, laughing at something Claire had said. They had the same smile.
I once believed the truth would heal everything instantly. It didn’t. It could not bring back the missed birthdays, school plays, or late nights. But it gave us something we had never had before: a beginning.
Andrew and I did not try to rekindle our teenage romance. Too much time had passed, and we were different people now. Still, we became friends. Sometimes that is its own kind of miracle.
