Stuck Raising My Uncle's Lovechild

"Matt is so pitiful, Damian," Mom said. "How could you bear to let him go back and be tormented by Aunt Heather?"

I was stunned at how Mom had the audacity to bring up my background and ask me to sympathize with Matt. I stared at her as she spoke with an air that was utterly and impossibly calm.

I couldn't help but wonder why I had been so foolish in my past life. I completely failed to see the malice behind her mask, and for the sake of that hollow concept she called family, I gave her my entire life.

Hadn't Grandpa's years of raising me been more than enough to define family?

Yet I still chased after the birth mother who abandoned me, simply because we were related by blood.

I was the product of an affair. Mom had me during a sordid affair with a repairman, all while her husband, Nathan Trent, was working far from home.

Nathan was habitually unfaithful, using his work travel as an excuse to sleep around, leaving Mom alone to tend an empty house.

Mom had originally agreed to the marriage solely for the sake of Nathan's money and property. There was no real affection between the couple, but she was lonely, and human desires, repressed for years, finally broke her resolve.

She also reasoned that if men could cheat, then she could do it too. There were plenty of similar families in the village, and it was an unspoken rule that spouses were often unfaithful, after all. Thus, she concluded that a minor indiscretion on her part was acceptable.

It was nothing more than a passing affair with my biological father, as he already had a family of his own.

Their intention was clearly to have a casual, meaningless fling. So why did they allow me to be born if that was the case? Why did they refuse to take precautions if they wanted to have their fun?

Having discovered Mom's pregnancy, my biological father immediately disappeared without a trace. He was merely a transient worker who survived on sporadic work; even his identity was fake.

He fled with astonishing speed when accountability finally called. He couldn't even provide for his legitimate family, so there was no way he could possibly care about an illegitimate child.

Yet, despite all this, Mom stubbornly refused an abortion and insisted on bringing me into the world.

Uncle Jared had a gambling debt he dared not confess to my aunt, Heather Reed, so he had no choice but to extort money from Mom.

Mom devised what she believed was a perfect plan—that was to shift the paternity onto Nathan and use the pregnancy to get money from him.

Nathan, however, wasn't a fool. He was perpetually absent and unaware of the truth, but the neighbors living nearby were keen observers. They had clearly witnessed the unknown man entering and leaving the house of a married woman, who lived alone, a couple of times.

Nathan might have ignored Mom's affairs, but he drew the line at allowing an illegitimate child to muddy his family's lineage. He adamantly refused to raise another man's son.

Mom was heavily pregnant when she realized that her scheme had failed. She had no choice but to carry me to term at that point. She gave birth in the hospital, was discharged that same day, and proceeded to simply abandon me wherever she could.

I was abandoned right outside the entrance of Grandpa's store. He was the one who found me and raised me as his own. If I hadn't been lucky enough to meet such a kind person, I probably would have died long ago on that snowy night.

Having disposed of me, her bastard child, Mom successfully returned to a peaceful and harmonious life with Nathan. She even had a son with him.

Their marriage looked flawless from the outside, as if the couple had never once had any disagreement. They had managed to deceive everyone before, and it was clear they would continue to coast along on that pretense.

In the end, they still managed to achieve their perfect, harmonious family life. I was simply discarded, rendered invisible, as though I had never existed in Mom's life at all.

I would have kept my peace if she had just stayed away permanently. Instead, after abandoning me when I was a baby, she waited until Grandpa had finished the hard work of raising me to reappear and demand the spoils.

It all started when I was vulnerable at Grandpa's funeral. I inherently looked for the good in every person since Grandpa had raised me to be kind.

Mom and Uncle Jared, wearing genuinely remorseful expressions, paid their respects to Grandpa and cried as they apologized to me.