“You know it's okay to miss her,” Bridgette René, my mother's best friend, said softly, a slight smile touching her lips as her eyes searched mine. I tore my gaze away from hers and nodded at an unfamiliar face among the small crowd mourning my mother's death.
“If you need anything…uh, I'm here for you,” she added. Her touch on my arm felt awkward and strange so I shifted slightly away from her and her hand dropped to her side. I sensed the pain of my rejection without looking at her face.
I had grown up seeing Bridgette by my mother's side and over the years, she had become my friend and confidant too. At least, that was what I believed until a few days ago when everything I thought I knew about the two women fell apart.
On the morning my mom died, I found a secret file kept neatly inside a folder and hidden beneath the floorboards of the basement. For years, she had warned me never to touch anything down there and that morning, I finally understood why.
My name was written across the front of the folder in my mom's unmistakable handwriting. I stared at it for several minutes, fear and suspicion clouding my senses before I finally forced myself to open it.
Inside were copies of my birth certificate, a different one from the copy I had always kept, along with hospital documents and pictures of me as a baby. I was still trying to make sense of what I was seeing when a picture slipped out from between the papers and landed on the floor.
I picked it up and felt the air leave my lungs. My mother was standing outside a hospital beside a woman I had known all my life.
Bridgette René.
Her eyes looked tired and swollen, and she was holding a baby while my mom stood beside her with one hand gently touching the child's head. That baby was me.
The letter inside the folder confirmed what I had already begun to fear. My mom's handwriting looked shakier than usual as though she had written it during the final days of her illness but the words were clear enough.
She has adopted me from her best friend because Bridgette's job as an undercover agent would not permit her to keep and raise me.
She is still your mother and we both love you. Love her as you always have.
I fumed at those final words. My mom had no right to ask that of me for they had both lied to me.
Mom had always told me Bridgette had an important job that was top-secret and that was all I knew of her. I had never questioned why she disappeared for months at a time or why she sometimes arrived without warning, stayed for a few days and left before I could understand where she had been.
When mom became seriously ill, Bridgette travelled for months only to arrive a few hours before mom passed away. I had spent those final hours outside the bedroom, desperate for one last private moment with Mom. Bridgette talked with Mom for two whole hours.
When she rushed out of the room with tears filling her eyes to tell me Mom was gone, I wanted to deck her. I had never forgiven her for that.
And now, standing with my friends after Mom's funeral, I couldn't decide what hurt more, losing the woman who had raised me or discovering that the woman I had blamed for keeping me away from her had been my mother all along.
Now my mom was gone and suddenly the woman I had once trusted wouldn't leave me alone.
I hope you enjoyed reading this short piece. It's inspired by the Freewrite #dailyprompt phrase "secret file”.
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Image by Tomasz Kowaluk from Pixabay