“I refused to give him away. I wasn’t even two months pregnant, and I loved him with everything I had,” she says softly. “So I packed my stuff and moved in with Andrew and his family. His parents were not much more understanding, but he was eighteen. They weren’t going to have their grandson living on the street, so they took me in. He was the star quarterback, and his name was on everyone’s lips as the next big thing. He got a scholarship, and I followed him here. The only way for us to have housing was for us to be married, so one day, we went to city hall and made it official. It was my happy ending,” she says, and her eyes then look down.

“But then I gave birth to Dylan, and he started to spend more and more time away from home. He would complain that he couldn’t focus with Dylan crying all the time. I was with a newborn who had colic and only slept two hours a night. A day would turn two and then close to the end, he would be gone for a whole week. I just didn’t get it. Dylan was such a beautiful baby, and every single time he smiled, it just made me love him more.” She smiles now, and I notice every time she talks abut him, there is this look she gets in her eyes. The look that I see every single time I look in my mother’s eyes or my father’s.