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As the day unfolded, we talked while the baby slept between us, unaware of the past being pieced together around her. Eli shared how he had grown up believing he needed to earn his worth, how he had worked tirelessly to build a life on his own, and how love and loss had arrived together in ways he never expected. My mother, it turned out, had never stopped watching over him.
She had offered help without conditions, believing kindness didn’t need to be explained or announced. Listening to him, I understood something that had been missing from my own grief: betrayal had broken my trust, but it hadn’t broken my capacity for connection. That had only been waiting.
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