We hadn’t seen Grandma Vi in twelve years. She wasn’t dead—just exiled. My mom called her “toxic” and kept her away. So when Vi showed up at my wedding in a lime-green coat and red lipstick, everyone froze.
She walked straight to the head table, tapped her glass, and said, “Dariel deserves to know.”
Then to me: “The man you call your father? He’s not.”
She handed me a locket with a photo—Vi, a man I didn’t recognize, and a baby in the church nursery. It was me. “His name was Elijah,” she said. “Your real dad. Your mom drove him away.”
I confronted my mother. She denied it at first—then admitted the truth. Elijah had wanted to be in my life, but she shut him out.
I found his sister, Carmen. She said Elijah died in 2012, still talking about me. “He never stopped hoping,” she said.
Later, in my mom’s attic, I found a suitcase full of letters Elijah had sent—every birthday, every year. She’d hidden them all.
When my son was born, we named him Eli. Vi cried when she held him. I placed their photo next to the old one in the locket.
The truth came late—but it came. And sometimes, it arrives uninvited… wearing lime green and carrying everything you were never supposed to know.
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