After my mother died, I returned to our empty home to sort through her things. Among them, I found a pendant I’d never seen before. Curious, I added it to a table of her belongings at a local fair.

There, an older man named Jackson recognized the pendant. “I gave one just like this to a woman named Martha,” he said, eyes misty. That was my mother’s name.

Stunned, I offered to send him the pendant later and discreetly took a strand of his hair from his coat. A DNA test confirmed the unthinkable—Jackson was my father.

When I told him, he reacted with anger and disbelief. “You had no right,” he snapped and shut the door on me. But his teenage daughter Julia ran after me, saying, “Come back tomorrow.”

The next day, Jackson apologized. He revealed he had asked my mother to marry him but never knew she was pregnant. My mother, scared he’d feel trapped, had let him go in silence.

I gave him her diary. “She let you go because she loved you,” I said.

Jackson wept. “She was my dream.”

We shared dinner that night. It wasn’t perfect—but it was the beginning of a family I never thought I’d have.