The call came during work.
“This is Nurse Holloway from Lincoln Elementary. Your daughter, Lila, fainted at recess.”
I raced to the school, panic rising. That morning, Lila seemed fine—maybe a little pale, but smiling.
In the nurse’s office, she lay quietly, clutching a juice box. And sitting beside her was someone I never expected to see again—Maria Holloway.
His sister.
The man I once loved. The man who broke me. Maria and I had been close once, but when I fled—pregnant and afraid—I left without a word.
“I didn’t know she was yours,” she said gently. “Until I saw her eyes.”
“You saved her,” I whispered.
“She’s strong. Like her mother.”
I told her the truth—Lila is his daughter. But he doesn’t know, and never will. Maria didn’t argue. She had seen the worst of him too. “I left, too,” she said. “Six years ago. I couldn’t take it anymore.”
We sat quietly, both changed, both survivors.
Later, Lila asked, “Are you friends?”
Maria and I exchanged a look.
“Something like that,” I said.
In the weeks that followed, we slowly rebuilt something new. Not what we had—but something real.
We couldn’t rewrite the past. But we could protect the future.