I never expected to find my childhood sweater in a laundromat—twenty years after my mom vanished. But the moment I saw her embroidery, I knew the truth Grandma told me was a lie. Between raising my three-year-old son, Liam, and caring for my grandmother, nostalgia had no place in my life—until that moment. At the laundromat, as I waited for my clothes, I wandered over to a basket of lost items and saw it: a small, worn-out blue sweater. When I flipped the collar, my name was stitched inside with delicate, faded thread.
Instantly, memories flooded back—my mother sewing by the window, whispering promises to always be there. But she hadn’t been. Grandma had said she abandoned me. Yet standing there, sweater in hand, I realized nothing was as it seemed. A woman sitting nearby told me about a kind soul at a charity center—someone who sewed little embroideries for children and spoke of a daughter she had lost but never stopped searching for. My heart raced. After all these years, had my mother been looking for me all along?