Today I ran into a friend of mine who retired to Florida. He came back to New York City for a visit and told me something wild. His 44 year old daughter contacted him out of the blue.
Backstory, when he returned home from Vietnam, he settled down with a woman. She got pregnant, but before the baby was even born, she ran off while eight months pregnant. Vanished. No warning. No goodbye. Never to be seen again.
Turns out that baby was a girl he never got to meet. Four decades later, she found him through Ancestry.com and wrote a letter. That letter ended up being delivered to his old address, where his son lives now.
Shockingly, his long lost daughter lives just eight miles away from his retirement home. She has two kids, one 10, the other 13. He told me she looks like him, talks like him, and even finishes his sentences. After all these years, he’s got grandkids to watch over. And that gave him something to live for.
As for the mother? When her kids got older, two more boys from two different men, she hooked up with a gang of criminals. Got into heroin. Got deep. And then she died. My friend didn’t share the details, and I didn’t press him. Some endings speak for themselves.
But he’s at peace. This is actually the second daughter who came back. Years ago, another daughter from a past wife came storming in to confront him for not paying child support.
He didn’t argue. He didn’t yell. He opened his desk drawer, pulled out a box full of canceled checks, and handed it to her.
The receipts were always there.
