He Chose Her Over Me So I Chose Myself Chapter 39
I looked at that neat row of color, warmth spreading through my chest.
“Okay.”
Footsteps sounded outside.
My adoptive parents stood at the far end of the lobby.
My mother had grown thinner. My father was still dressed in an impeccable dark overcoat. They didn’t come closer. They only looked from a distance at the stained-glass window.
A moment later, my father came over alone.
“The statement stayed up for the full thirty days, just as agreed. All the images have been removed, too.”
“My lawyer told me.”
“Your mother wanted to come see it.”
He said it like an explanation. Or perhaps like he was waiting for me to invite them into the classroom.
I said nothing.
My mother finally walked closer, her eyes sweeping over the design notes on the wall.
“You liked this kind of thing even when you were little. Back then, we thought art couldn’t put food on the table.”
It was the closest she had ever come to an apology.
And even now, she framed the hurt as a mistake in judgment.
“It’s not that you didn’t know what I liked.”
I looked at her calmly.
“It’s that you knew, and you decided it didn’t matter.”
Her lips trembled.
“June, we did raise you all those years.”
“And I’ve never denied the adoption, and I’ve never asked you to take responsibility for my life.”
I shifted, blocking the classroom door.
“But my life isn’t open to you anymore, either.”
My father’s face darkened, but then—as if he remembered the legal bills still sitting in his inbox—he didn’t order me around.
They turned and walked away.
As my mother passed under the stained-glass window, sunlight landed on her shoulder.
She paused for a second, but she never looked back.
Being seen late did not make up for years of absence.
And I didn’t need them in the front row to know the window was beautiful.