Who is a child without roots? No one. A ghost that accidentally found a physical shell.”
“Does that mean you always felt like a ghost?” Mikhail asked as he stirred his coffee in my stylish kitchen.
I looked at him—my only friend who knew the whole truth. The man who helped me find her. The one who carried me in her womb and then discarded me like a rough draft.
My first cry didn’t move her heart. All that remained in the memory of my adoptive parents was a note pinned to a cheap blanket: “Forgive me.” One word—everything I ever got from the woman who called herself my mother.
Lyudmila Petrovna and Gennady Sergeevich—an elderly childless couple—found me early one October morning.
They opened the door and saw a bundle. Alive, crying. They had enough decency not to send me to an orphanage, but not enough love to truly make me theirs.
“You’re in our home, Alexandra, but remember—we’re strangers to you, and you to us. We’re just fulfilling a human duty,” Lyudmila Petrovna repeated every year on the day they found me.
Their apartment became my cage. I was given a corner in the hallway with a fold-out cot. I ate separately—after them, finishing their cold leftovers.
My clothes were from flea markets, always two sizes too big. “You’ll grow into them,” my adoptive mother explained. But by the time they fit, they were falling apart.
At school, I was an outcast. “Foundling,” “stray,” “nameless”—my classmates whispered.
I didn’t cry. Why bother? I stored it up. Strength. Rage. Resolve. Every shove, every sneer, every cold glance became fuel.
At thirteen, I started working—handing out flyers, walking dogs. I hid the money in a crack between the floorboards. Lyudmila Petrovna found it once while cleaning.
“Stealing?” she asked, holding the crumpled bills. “I knew it. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree…”
“It’s mine. I earned it,” I replied.
She threw the money on the table.
“Then you’ll pay. For food. For living here. You’re old enough.”
By fifteen, I worked every spare minute outside school. At seventeen, I was accepted to a university in another city.
I left with just a backpack and a box—the only thing connecting me to my past: a newborn photo taken by a nurse before the unknown mother took me from the hospital.
“She never loved you, Sasha,” my adoptive mother said at parting. “And neither did we. But at least we were honest.”
In the dorm, I lived in a room with three roommates. Ate instant noodles. Studied like mad—only perfect grades, only scholarship-worthy.
At night, I worked at a 24-hour store. My classmates laughed at my worn clothes. I didn’t hear them. I only heard the voice inside: “I’ll find her. I’ll show her who she threw away.”
There’s nothing worse than feeling unwanted. It gets under your skin in tiny shards that never leave.
I looked at Mikhail and fidgeted with the gold chain around my neck—the only luxury I’d allowed myself after my first big project. He knew my story. He had found my mother. He helped me form the plan.
“You know this won’t bring you peace,” he said.
“I don’t want peace,” I replied. “I want closure.”
Life is unpredictable. Sometimes it offers you a chance where you least expect it. In my third year, fate winked—our marketing professor gave us a project: develop a strategy for an organic cosmetics brand.
I didn’t sleep for three days, pouring all my fury and hunger for recognition into the assignment. When I finished the presentation, the room fell silent.
A week later, my professor burst into the office:
“Sasha, investors from Skolkovo saw your work. They want to talk.”
Instead of payment, they offered me a small share in the startup. I signed with a trembling hand—I had nothing to lose.
A year later, the startup took off. My share turned into a sum I never even dreamed of. Enough for a down payment on a home. Enough to invest in a new venture.
Life spiraled upward. One successful investment turned into two, then five.
At twenty-three, I bought a spacious apartment in the city center. I brought only my backpack and that box with the photo. No clutter from the past. Just a starting point and a direction forward.
“You know,” I told Mikhail the day we met at a conference, “I thought success would make me happy. But it only made me lonelier.”
“You’ve got a ghost on your shoulder,” he said, hitting a truth I hadn’t been able to name.
That’s how I told my story to the only person who knew it all. Mikhail wasn’t just a friend—he was a private detective. He offered help. I accepted. Two years of searching. Hundreds of dead ends. False leads. But he found her—the woman who left behind just one word: forgive me.
Irina Sokolova.
47 years old. Divorced. Lives in a shabby high-rise on the outskirts. Survives on odd jobs. No children. “No children.” That line burned more than anything. I saw her photo—a gray face worn down by life.
Her eyes had none of the fire I’d fought to keep in mine.
“She’s looking for work,” Mikhail said. “She cleans apartments. Are you sure about this?”
“Absolutely.”
The plan was simple: Mikhail posted a job ad on my behalf. He interviewed her in my office, at my desk, while I watched via hidden camera.
“Do you have much cleaning experience, Irina Mikhailovna?” he asked formally.
“Yes,” she nervously picked at her cracked nails. “Hotels, offices. I’m very thorough.”
“The employer is demanding. She values perfect cleanliness and punctuality.”
“I understand. I really need this job.”
Her voice was cracked, like an old record. Her posture was submissive—a second skin now, one I despised.
“You’re hired on a trial basis,” Mikhail said.
After she left, I came out. Her passport lay on the table. I picked it up—the document of the one who gave me life and stole away love.
“Do you really want to keep going?” Mikhail asked.
“Now more than ever.”
A week later, Irina started working. I watched her enter my life with cleaning rags and lemon-scented solutions. The one who had been everything to me, yet chose to be nothing.
Our first face-to-face was brief. I pretended to be busy, barely nodded when Mikhail introduced us.
She gave a clumsy half-bow. There was no recognition in her eyes—only fear of losing the job and the trained submissiveness.
My heart was silent. Nothing stirred at the sight of my real mother. Only cold curiosity.
I watched her polish my floors, dust my expensive trinkets bought to impress.
Watched her wash my silk blouses, linen trousers. I left generous tips—not out of pity, but to keep her coming back. So the show could go on.
Two months. Eight cleanings. Irina became a ghost in my home. She appeared and vanished, leaving only the smell of citrus and spotless surfaces.
We barely spoke. I was always “too busy” or “on an important call.” But I saw her—every move, every breath.
I noticed how she secretly studied the photos on my walls: me at the Eiffel Tower, me at a conference, me with business partners.
Sometimes she stared at my face longer than a stranger should.
Did she see the resemblance? Did my cheekbones, my eyes, my mouth whisper anything familiar to her? Did her body remember what it once carried?
Mikhail thought I was dragging it out.
“You’re torturing her—and yourself,” he said one evening after she left.
Maybe he was right. But I couldn’t stop.
Every time she left, I took out that baby photo and stared at the tiny face, searching for answers. Why? What was so wrong with me that she couldn’t love me?
The answer came unexpectedly.
One day she paused by my bookshelf, where a silver frame held my graduation photo. I froze in the doorway and watched her fingertips—cracked and broken—brush the glass with heartbreaking tenderness.
She brought it closer, squinting, as if trying to recall something long forgotten.
“See something familiar?” I asked, stepping inside.
The frame trembled in her hands. She turned around, caught like a thief.
“Alexandra Gennadievna… I didn’t mean to… I was just dusting.”
Her eyes shimmered.
“You’re crying,” I said—not a question, a fact.
She wiped her face with a quick, childlike gesture.
“It’s nothing… dust. It irritates my eyes. Happens often.”
I walked past her and sat down, heart pounding in my throat. Something primal screamed: Run! But I sat straight, voice sharp like a scalpel.
“Sit,” I said.
She perched on the edge of the chair, fingers clenched white on her knees.
“There’s something about you…” she mumbled, avoiding my gaze. “You remind me of someone. From long ago.”
I snapped.
“Irina Mikhailovna, twenty-five years ago you left a child at someone’s door. A girl. With a note: ‘Forgive me.’ That girl was named Alexandra. Irina, look at me. Look at me.”
She looked up—eyes wide with fear. Her hand flew to her mouth, stifling a cry.
“This… can’t be,” she whispered.
I opened the drawer and pulled out the baby photo. Laid it before her.
“You’ve haunted my dreams. I always imagined asking you: why? Why didn’t I even deserve a chance? What was so awful about me?”
Her face crumpled. She sank to her knees.
“You… don’t understand… I was so young. The baby’s father left when he found out. My parents kicked me out. I had nothing—no home, no money, no support. I didn’t know what to do…”
“So you threw me away?” My voice shook.
“I thought it would be better for you. That someone else could give you what I couldn’t. A home, food, love…”
A bitter laugh broke from my chest.
“Love? You thought strangers would love a foundling? They raised me, yes. But they never loved me.”
Tears streamed down her face. She reached toward me but didn’t dare touch.
“I thought of you every day… every single day, for twenty-five years.”
“But you didn’t look for me,” I said coldly.
“I did! I came back a year later. They told me they didn’t know what I meant. That they never found a baby. I thought…”
“You thought I went to an orphanage. And you didn’t try again.”
She lowered her head, sobbing.
“Forgive me… if you can. Or at least… let me…”
“Let you what?” I asked.
“Stay near you. Get to know you. Even if it’s just as your cleaner. Just don’t send me away.”
I looked at her—broken, miserable, crushed by life and her own choices.
And suddenly, I felt light. As if a huge stone I’d carried forever had vanished.
“No,” I said softly. “I don’t want revenge. But there’s nothing to forgive either. You made your choice then. I’m making mine now. I release you. And myself.”
I walked to the window. The city roared beyond the glass—alive, moving, full of possibility.
“Mikhail will see you out and pay you for today. Please don’t come back.”
When she finally left, I sat in my chair, phone in hand. On the screen: “Contact blocked.”
I brought the photo of newborn me to my eyes—a tiny creature with a long road ahead.
“You made it,” I whispered. “You made it on your own.”
A few days later, I called her.
I invited her to meet again. To start over.
I let go of all the pain—and tried to understand. Tried to forgive.
