No one remembered her when she was little, but the moment she started earning money, her parents suddenly reappeared.
Her parents had spent her entire childhood debating where to place her. Shed arrived into their family at the worst possible timeunwanted, unplanned. At first, her grandmother had helped care for her, but after the old woman suffered a stroke, there was no one left to raise the little girl. The meagre pension and her parents wages werent enough to care for a sick woman, let alone a child. After a few months, they made the decisionAlice would be sent to an orphanage, *temporarily*.
«Youll stay here just a little while,» her mother had told her, «while your father and I save up some money.»
Alice believed them. She waited. But life in the childrens home was no fairy tale. There were no private rooms, no tenderness, no careit felt more like a prison. She couldnt connect with the other children; the staff barely noticed her. To survive, Alice buried herself in books, the occasional charity donations that trickled in.
She always earned good marks in school. When she was accepted to university, she was overjoyedfinally, a way out, a new city. She had almost nothing to start with, but she worked part-time, scrimped, saved, dreaming of building her own business. People laughed when she opened a tiny online shop selling homemade candles.
*»What kind of job is that? Youll never earn real money.»*
But the little business grew. She was one of the first in the market doing it this way, and soon, customers poured in. A young man helped her with shipmentseventually, he left his own job to make candles with her. Slowly, it became a family business. The orphanage staff heard about Alice; her face was all over the shops branding. And so did her parents.
Under the pretence of placing an order, they reached out. When their package arrived, they traced the return address straight to Alices door.
She wasnt happy to see them. They had forgotten hershe had forgotten them. Maybe it was cruel, but she threw them out, her husband stepping in to shut the door behind them.
They hadnt raised her. They hadnt even checked if she was alive. Now, suddenly, they pretended to love her? It was too late. They should have come for her soonershould have taken her home. But Alice was grown now. A mother herself. She didnt need parents like that.
