\u201cI treated you so badly,\u201d I mumbled. \u201cYesterday, I\u2014\u201d \u201cYou were scared,\u201d she said softly. \u201cYou were sixteen. And yesterday\u2026 you were still scared.\u201d There was no bitterness in her voice. Just understanding. She had grown into a woman with a strength I didn\u2019t have at her age. A heart big enough to hold compassion for the mother who had abandoned her. The transplant was done two weeks later. She asked for nothing in return. No apology. No recognition. No place in our family.\u2026I was eating lunch in a quiet caf\u00e9 near the hospital when I noticed the waitress staring at me. She couldn\u2019t have been more than twenty-one. Dark hair pulled back into a ponytail. Nervous hands clutching her notebook. When she walked toward me, my stomach clenched. \u201cMrs. Collins?\u201d she asked softly. \u201cYes?\u201d Her lips trembled. \u201cMy name is\u2014\u201d I knew it. Somehow, before she even said it, I knew it. \u201cYou\u2019re my past,\u201d I interrupted, my voice colder than ever.\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cI treated you so badly,\u201d I mumbled. \u201cYesterday, I\u2014\u201d \u201cYou were scared,\u201d she said softly. \u201cYou were sixteen. And yesterday\u2026…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":245,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flavorlab.delicedcook.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flavorlab.delicedcook.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flavorlab.delicedcook.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flavorlab.delicedcook.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flavorlab.delicedcook.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=244"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/flavorlab.delicedcook.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":246,"href":"https:\/\/flavorlab.delicedcook.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244\/revisions\/246"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flavorlab.delicedcook.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flavorlab.delicedcook.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flavorlab.delicedcook.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flavorlab.delicedcook.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}