The rain had been falling lightly all morning, and Alexa sat in her apartment, staring blankly at the gray sky through the kitchen window. The city buzzed quietly beneath her, but her mind was somewhere far away—two decades back, to a porch, a stuffed bunny, and a mother who walked away without looking back.
She could still smell the perfume. Could still hear the crunch of tires on gravel.
She had only been five, yet the moment lived vividly in her bones.
“Mark doesn’t want children in his new home,” her mother had said with teary eyes and trembling hands.
And with those words, she’d handed Alexa over to Grandma Rose like she was a misfit toy. Alexa had begged, sobbed, screamed even, but her mother’s back never turned.
That was the beginning of the shoebox.
At first, it was just a couple of drawings—a crayon-sketched tea party, a swing set, a mother and daughter with matching hair.
Alexa didn’t understand why she drew them.
Only that she had to. That shoebox became her secret therapy, her proof of love that was never reciprocated.
Grandma Rose never tried to replace her mom but filled every crack the absence left behind.
She was warmth, consistency, and unconditional care.
Alexa grew up with Sunday pancakes, perfect attendance at school plays, and the softest bedtime stories. Yet even as her grandmother’s hair turned silver and her own drawings grew more detailed, that shoebox kept expanding—quietly documenting a love Alexa had never stopped craving.
Then, Grandma Rose died.
It was sudden.
Alexa got the call on a Tuesday and the world crumbled before she even put down the phone.
Rose had been more than a grandmother—she was a mother in all the ways that mattered.
The funeral was a haze, and the weeks afterward felt like wading through fog. The silence in her apartment was unbearable, and the ache was relentless.
Until one rainy afternoon, there was a knock.
Alexa opened the door, expecting a delivery or maybe a neighbor. Instead, she found herself face to face with Evelyn—her mother, aged and elegant in a way Alexa barely recognized.
The designer coat, the manicured nails—it was all a far cry from the woman who had once kneeled with mascara-streaked cheeks and let her go.
“I heard about your grandma,” Evelyn said.
“I’m so sorry I wasn’t at the funeral.
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