When Kayla abandoned her baby, I gave up everything to raise him as my own. Fifteen years of scraped knees, birthdays, and bedtime stories later, she reappeared in his life… with a car, and took him away. Five years later, a knock on the door turned everything upside down again.
I hadn’t seen my younger sister Kayla for several months, and now she was standing at my doorstep with a baby in her arms — a boy, about six months old, half asleep and whimpering quietly.
Her eyeliner, usually flawless, was smudged across her cheeks, and the signature perfume she always wore had been replaced by something old and sad.
‘Please take care of him, May, just for a couple of weeks, until I sort everything out,’ she muttered, pushing a bag of nappies into my hands.
‘What?’ My fingers automatically closed around the strap of the bag. ‘Kayla, what happened? When did you—?’
‘It’s complicated,’ she settled the baby more comfortably in her arms, as if he might break under his own weight. ‘I have a couple of opportunities. Good ones. I need time, I need some space to sort things out. Two weeks max, May. Please.’
That was how Kayla usually phrased it when she meant, ‘I’m in trouble again.’ Her eyes, the same as mine, only always more anxious, darted towards the car.
‘Two weeks,’ I repeated sternly.
‘You’re a lifesaver, sis,’ she smiled with relief, handing me the baby. ‘I’ll call you tomorrow.’
But weeks turned into months, and Kayla vanished into thin air.
The only reminders of her were rare messages every few weeks: ‘I need a little more time’ or ‘I can’t talk right now.’
And then — nothing.
Three months after her disappearance, an envelope arrived in the post. Inside was a birth certificate — and an unpleasant surprise.
The ‘name’ field was left blank. So the document was official, but she hadn’t given the boy a name. Kayla was listed as the mother, but there was no mention of the father.
I thought of our grandfather, Liam, the only stable male figure in our chaotic childhood. He was kind, reliable, patient.
I looked at the boy playing with his toys on the floor.
‘Liam it is, then,’ I decided.
That night was the first of many: first steps in my living room, first words, first day at nursery.
I became everything to him — rocking him when he had a fever, spending sleepless nights when he was teething, laughing with him when we built towers out of blocks, put together wooden puzzles, and teased each other by sticking out our tongues.
When Liam was seven, his teacher called to discuss braces.
The price made my stomach clench, but I took a night job cleaning offices in the city centre, scrubbing toilets with hands already covered in calluses from my day shift at the warehouse.
When he turned ten, the school required every student to have a laptop.
Under the neon lights of the pawn shop, I said goodbye to my beloved guitar — the last remnant of my student music days and my only luxury — trading it for a laptop that would help him study.
‘Where’s your guitar?’ he asked a week later, noticing the empty corner of the room.
‘I just lent it to a friend,’ I lied, hating how easy it came out.
Kayla remained only a ghost. Sometimes — a dry birthday greeting once every couple of years: ‘Tell him happy birthday from Mum.’ As if the word ‘Mum’ belonged to her by right, not by effort.
But everything changed on his 16th birthday.
I was preparing a small party — just a few friends, pizza and homemade cake — when an engine roared outside.
I looked out the window and saw a shiny SUV that must have cost more than my annual income.
Kayla got out, almost unrecognisable. Perfect makeup, expensive clothes, hair like something out of an advert.
Liam came down the stairs, stopping when he saw her in the doorway.
‘Hi, sweetie,’ she said. ‘Sixteen years old, huh? I brought presents.’
He looked at me, confusion on his face. I showed him photos of Kayla and told him the truth, as much as he could understand at his age: that his mum loved him but couldn’t take care of him. She had problems. Maybe someday she would be ready.
It seems that day has come. With a £60,000 SUV.
She came every day that week — driving him around parks, buying him expensive clothes, telling him fairy tales about ‘difficult times’ and ‘eternal love’ that supposedly kept them apart.
And then came the biggest gift of all.
On a hot July day, a silver convertible with a huge red bow stopped outside our old duplex.
I stepped out onto the porch as Kayla got out of the car. Liam gasped beside me.
‘Well, what do you think, darling?’ Kayla smiled as she walked down to us with the keys in her manicured hand. ‘It’s all yours.’
Liam cried out with joy. He jumped off the porch and rushed to hug her.
‘You don’t have to suffer here anymore,’ she said, looking straight into my eyes over his shoulder. ‘Move in with me, sweetheart. It’s time for us to be a family again.’
He turned to me, his eyes filled with confusion, guilt and desire. I saw desire win out.
So the boy I had named and raised as my own left.
No hugs. No goodbyes. Just excitement, masking the guilt, as he got into the car that cost more than anything I owned.
Two days later, a message arrived:
‘Thank you. I’ll give her a chance.’
Alone in our quiet flat, I gathered his drawings signed ‘To Auntie/Mummy,’ homemade Mother’s Day cards, and put everything in boxes.
I mourned like a mother without a grave to visit.
There were no casseroles from neighbours, no sympathy cards, no funeral. Only empty corners where the boy had grown up, and silence where his laughter had once echoed.
At work, people kept asking about Liam.
I memorised the script:
‘He lives with his mother. Yes, his biological mother. Yes, everything is fine, it’s a good opportunity for him.’
Then they stopped asking.
Then Liam remained only in my memories and in that corner of my heart that he took with him.
Five years — an eternity and a moment.
I moved into a one-room flat on the other side of town, got a job in an office with a better salary, and even went out sometimes.
Life took on a new rhythm: calmer, more stable, lonely.
And then there was another knock at the door.
When I opened it, I barely recognised him.
‘Liam,’ I whispered.
He shifted awkwardly from foot to foot, his hands in his pockets, a travel bag at his feet.
‘Hello, Aunt May,’ his voice trembled. ‘She… she’s kicking me out. She said I have to figure out my own life.’
I was silent, just looking at this stranger with Liam’s face.
‘University didn’t work out,’ he continued, the words coming out quickly.
‘I didn’t try hard enough, in her opinion. She said I was wasting her money. And when her new boyfriend moved in a month ago, everything got even worse, and…’ He fell silent and swallowed. ‘I have nowhere else to go.’
He hadn’t come for forgiveness — simply because he had nowhere else to go.
The pain and betrayal I thought I had overcome came rushing back with renewed force.
But he was my boy. And he had nowhere else to go.
‘You can sleep on the sofa,’ I said, stepping aside. ‘I don’t have any spare rooms.’
Relief lit up his face.
‘Thank you. I won’t be any trouble.’
‘I have rules,’ I warned him. ‘It’s not like it used to be.’
He nodded quickly.
‘Of course. Whatever you say.’
Liam did his own laundry and paid part of the rent from his job at the auto repair shop.
Gradually, cautiously, we began to rebuild something from the ashes.
Our conversations grew warmer. He told me about the horror of living with Kayla — the endless string of boyfriends, the alcohol, the expectations he couldn’t live up to.
‘They took our car away in the first year,’ he confessed one evening over Chinese food. ‘It turned out she hadn’t even bought it. She just rented it to impress me.’
I nodded, not surprised.
He looked at me.
“I should have called. After I left. But at first, everything was so good. I was finally with my mum, and then, when things went wrong… it seemed too late, like I could never fix it.
‘It hurt when you left like that,’ I admitted. ‘But you were a child. Just as enchanted by Kayla as everyone else she tried to deceive. I understand… but you still should have called.’
He smiled then — a sad, small smile that contained our entire shared past.
‘Thank you for giving me a second chance, even though I don’t deserve it.’
I looked at him — the boy who had become a man, who had broken my heart.
‘That’s what families do,’ I replied. And for the first time in many years, the word ‘family’ did not taste bitter.
Liam couldn’t take it anymore. His shoulders shook as he covered his face with his hands.
Without thinking, I walked over and hugged him.
‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered through his tears.
Outside, the rain tapped quietly on the windows, turning our little house into a cosy, quiet cocoon.
