Denise abruptly turned off her phone, the screen going black.
“Simon, please, stop this right now,” Dorothy whispered urgently from her seat, but her plea went completely unheard.
Simon did not stop, his eyes burning with a righteous fire he had kept hidden for years.
“A week ago, while I was searching for old photos for my graduation video, I found something tucked inside a forgotten shoebox in the attic.”
He pulled out a wrinkled envelope, and Joanna felt a sudden chill, immediately recognizing the jagged, hurried handwriting of her sister.
Simon opened the envelope and read the contents aloud, his voice devoid of any warmth.
“Mariana, do not look for me unless it is a dire emergency, because you are better suited for these things, and I really need to go live my own life.”
The silence in the room became thick and suffocating, nearly impossible to bear.
Jonathan, the man who had accompanied Denise, pulled his arm away and looked at her with a mix of shock and total disbelief.
“Did you actually write that to her?” he whispered, his voice cutting through the quiet like a knife.
Denise desperately tried to summon her usual, practiced smile, but her face simply wouldn’t obey her.
“She was so young, she was just incredibly confused and overwhelmed by the situation,” she stammered, looking frantically at the crowd for an ally who was not there.
Simon looked at her for the first time, his expression filled with a haunting, quiet sadness.
“Joanna was young too, and she never once asked for permission to be the person who saved me,” he said, and that phrase hit the room harder than any shout ever could.
“Where were you when I had that severe allergic reaction in the third grade?” Simon demanded, stepping closer to the edge of the stage.
“Where were you when we could not afford the registration fee and Joanna had to sell the only piece of jewelry she owned to make sure I could attend classes?”
Denise opened her mouth to argue, but no words came out, as if her voice had been stolen by the weight of her own history.
The cake remained on Dorothy’s lap, the red icing melting and beginning to stain the cardboard box, turning the words “real mother” into a smudged, ugly smear of regret.
Simon stepped off the stage, holding the tattered yellow blanket in one hand and the letter in the other, walking straight toward Joanna.
Denise scrambled to her feet and stepped into his path, desperately trying to reassert her authority.
“I am your mother, Simon, I am the one who brought you into this world!” she hissed, trying to reclaim the narrative.
Simon stopped, his face stone cold.
“Yes, you brought me into the world, but everyone in this room needs to know why you really came back here today.”
Part 3: The Breaking Point
Denise turned deathly pale, looking like a young child who had been caught in a terrible, elaborate lie.
“I have no idea what you are talking about, you are just trying to hurt me,” she murmured, though her voice lacked any real conviction.
Simon reached into his pocket and pulled out yet another folded document.
“Last week, I received a phone call from a law firm in the city, and they told me they wanted to verify my information because my grandfather left an educational trust in my name that nobody ever mentioned to me.”
Joanna gasped, as she had been completely unaware of any such fund.
Dorothy began to sob openly, covering her face with her hands.
“It was meant to help you when you started your university studies, and your grandfather set it up shortly before he passed away,” she admitted, her voice trembling.
“And why in the world was I never told that it existed?” Simon asked, his voice low and dangerous.
No one dared to answer him, the truth hanging in the air like a heavy storm cloud.
Jonathan, the man with Denise, took a long step back, as if the very presence of his companion had become toxic.
“Denise told me she had been supporting her son financially all these years,” he said, his tone icy and detached.
“She told me she was coming here today to finally take him back because your family wouldn’t let her near him.”
A wave of indignant murmurs erupted throughout the room as the audience realized the full extent of the deception.
Denise finally crumbled, her facade of perfection shattering into pieces.
“I suffered too, you have absolutely no idea what it was like to be a mother at such a young age!” she cried out.
Joanna finally rose from her seat, her movements graceful and calm, possessing a quiet strength that felt more powerful than any outburst.
