Torn truths

Aiden

I couldn’t get her face out of my mind. The woman at the event—no, not just any woman. My mother or at least the woman who used to be my mother before she decided I wasn’t good enough to keep.

She’d looked right at me, and for a moment, I thought I saw something. Recognition, maybe? Regret? But it was gone as quickly as it came, replaced by the same polished smile she wore for everyone else. Now, she was someone else entirely—Kendra, a congresswoman, a stranger.

But no matter how much she wanted to pretend otherwise, I knew. She couldn’t fool me. That was Kelly, my...