When my grandmothers inheritance forced my father to remember me, his memory of me resurfaced when he learned about the legacy left behind.
My life has never been a smooth river, yet the real blow didnt come from a childhood without parents. It arrived with the sudden reappearance of the man I once called Dad after fifteen years of silence. He didnt bring flowers or apologies. He arrived with a demand: Share the inheritance.
My parents split when I was four. My mother quickly fell into alcoholism; the court stripped her of her rights, and my father, unable to be a real parent, handed me over to his mother in a tiny, forgotten village near Toulouse. He lived in the city and only visited occasionallyonce every six months, sometimes less.
I attended the village school, learned to work the soil, sew on an old machine, fish, weave lavender bouquets, and make jam. Life with grandmother was simple but genuine. In the second grade, my father showed up with an unfamiliar woman. I was sent away. When I returned, only grandmother sat in her armchair, staring vacantly.
Wheres Dad? I asked.
He wont come back, Maëlle, she whispered.
And he never did. He built a new family, forgetting his daughter. Grandmother and I lived alone. I didnt cryI had her. Wise, calm, strict yet tender, she was everything to me: mother, father, friend.
When I finished primary school, Aunt Élodie, the village seamstress, told me, You have magical fingers. Enroll in a technical high school; dont waste your talent on the fields. I followed her advice and left for Lyon. I studied, worked, survived. My father lived three bus stops from my student residence, yet in four years he never asked how I was, and I never asked him.
After graduating, I found a workshop and married Théo. We rented a small flat, but every Friday we drove to the countryside to see grandmother. She adored Théo and beamed when she learned I was pregnant, though she never met her greatgrandson.
When grandmother died, the world emptied. Then the notary arrived: the house, the land, the savingsall left to me. I burst into tears over that document, not for the money but for the memories it represented.
My father didnt attend the funeral. No call, no word. He learned of his mothers death six months later, and then of the will. For the first time in fifteen years, he knocked on my door.
I didnt recognize the aged man at first. He got straight to the point:
The inheritance must be divided. Half belongs to me.
I laughed, bitter and loud:
You think you get half? You abandoned her and me. Now you remember? The smell of euros?
He growled, but Théo stood beside me:
Leave, or Ill make you.
He sued me, but even the law was on my side. He lost, paid the fees, and vanished again.
Théo and I opened our own sewing studio, producing work uniforms for laborers, doctors, firefighters. Orders poured in. We lived, we built a life.
I never saw my father again, nor do I want to. Grandmother was my true family. I held on because she once believed I deserved better, and I live to make her proud, somewhere up above the clouds.
