No one remembered her when she was little, but once she started earning money, her parents suddenly reappeared.
Throughout her childhood, her parents had spent their time figuring out where to place her. She had come into their family at the worst possible timethey hadnt wanted her. At first, her grandmother helped with her care, but after she had a stroke, there was no one left to raise the little girl. The modest pension and her parents’ wages werent enough to look after a sick woman, let alone a child. After a few months, they made the decision to send Alice to a childrens home temporarily.
*”Youll stay here for a while, while your father and I try to earn some money,”* her mother told her.
Alice truly believed them and waited, because life in the orphanage was no fairy tale. There was no private room, no warmth or careit was almost like being in prison. She couldnt make friends with the other children, the teachers barely noticed her, so to survive, Alice buried herself in books, the few that occasionally arrived from charities.
The girl always did well in school, and when she got into university, she was thrilled to move to another city. She had very little money to start with, but she found a part-time job and saved up to launch her own business. Plenty of people laughed when she opened a small online shop selling homemade candles.
*”What kind of job is that? You’ll never make decent money,”* they said.
But the little business grew. She was one of the first in the market doing this, and her customer base kept expanding. A young man helped with shipping, and eventually, he left his job to make candles with her. Slowly, the business flourished into a family-run success. The orphanage staff heard about Aliceshe was the face of the shop, after alland with all the publicity, her parents found out too. Under the pretence of making a purchase, they reached out to their daughter, and after receiving the package, they went straight to Alices home address.
Their arrival didnt please her. They had forgotten her, and she had forgotten them. Maybe it was rude, but she showed them the door, with her husband backing her up.
They hadnt wanted to raise her, hadnt even bothered to check on herand now, suddenly, they pretended to love her. It was too late. They should have looked for her sooner, should have taken her back home. Now Alice was grown, a mother herself, and she didnt need parents like that.
