When Vera and I found out we were expecting, it felt like all our dreams were finally coming true after years of hoping and waiting. But just weeks before the due date, Vera surprised me by saying she didn’t want me to be in the delivery room. It hurt deeply because I had imagined being there for every moment, holding her hand and witnessing the birth of our child.
Still, I trusted her and respected her wishes, believing that love sometimes means sacrifice—even when it’s painful. The day our daughter was born, I was overwhelmed with relief to know Vera was safe. But when I saw our baby, my heart sank. She had pale porcelain skin, golden hair, and piercing blue eyes—nothing like either of us. I questioned if she was really mine.
Vera gently showed me a crescent-shaped birthmark on our daughter’s ankle—the same birthmark I had, inherited from my late father. She explained that we both carried a rare recessive gene, which made it possible for our child to have features so different from ours. It was science, not betrayal.
When we brought her home, the doubts from my family became louder. My mother stared at our daughter suspiciously and even tried to scrub away the birthmark. My siblings questioned the baby’s parentage, and the tension at family gatherings was unbearable. Vera endured it all silently, but I saw the strain in her smile.