The night he disappeared, Andrew was beaten badly by two men sent by his father’s creditors. They told him if he didn’t disappear, they would come after me and the baby next. His parents then packed up the entire family and fled the state that same week, forcing Andrew to go with them.
But Andrew never stopped thinking about us.
Maya said he tried to contact me two years later when he turned 19. He saved up money and came back to our town secretly. He went to my parents’ house looking for me, but my father (who was furious and protective) told him I had moved on and that he should never come near us again. My dad never told me Andrew had come back.
Andrew fell into a deep depression after that. He started drinking. He got involved with the wrong crowd trying to make fast money to “prove” he could take care of his son one day.
At 21, Andrew was killed in a robbery gone wrong while working at a corner store at night. He died protecting the cashier — a single mother — from two armed men.
Maya sent old photos. Newspaper clippings. The obituary.
In the obituary it said: “Andrew leaves behind his parents, sister Maya, and a son he never got the chance to meet.”
I dropped the phone.
My legs literally gave out. I collapsed onto the kitchen floor, ugly crying, screaming, shaking.
**“Oh my God… THAT’S what really happened?!”**
All these years I hated him. I told our son his father was a coward who abandoned us. I built walls around my heart because of a man I thought chose to leave.
But he never stopped loving us. He tried to protect us the only way he knew how — by disappearing. And he died before he could make it right.
Leo fell to the floor with me, holding me while we both cried.
