My name is Theresa, and I am sixty-three years old.
I’ve been a widow since I was young, and I raised my only son, Marcus, entirely on my own.
He was smart, gentle, and handsome. Everyone said he had a great future. And it seemed like he did.
At twenty-one, he told me he had married Li Mei, a Chinese woman who was already fifty years old.
I opposed it — not out of prejudice, but because of the age gap, the distance, and the way everything happened so fast.
But my son was stubborn.
There was a determination in his eyes that I had no power to change.
They had a simple ceremony.
A month later, he left with her for China.
At the airport, he hugged me and cried.
I cried too, but in silence.
I thought he would return in a few years.
He never did.
One year passed.
Then two.
Then five.
I stopped asking.
Only the money kept coming — every year, exactly eighty thousand dollars, with a short message:
“Mom, take good care of yourself. I’m doing well.”
That word — well — was what worried me most.
We had a video call once.
He was still handsome, but his eyes weren’t the same.
Always tired.
Always in a hurry.
Always distant.
I asked why he didn’t come home.
He went quiet, then said:
“I’m very busy, Mom.”
I didn’t ask again.
Sometimes, mothers become cowards out of fear of hearing the truth.
Time passed.
My house improved thanks to the money he sent.
Everyone said I was fortunate.
But how can you be happy eating alone every day?
Every Christmas, I set a place for him.
I would cook his favorite stew and cry in silence.
Ten years.
It was too long.
Finally, I made a decision.
I was going to China.
I didn’t tell him anything.
For a sixty-three-year-old woman who had never left the country, it was madness.
But I bought the ticket with trembling hands and went.
I arrived and took a taxi to his address.
A two-story house.
Quiet — too quiet.
The garden was nice but lifeless.
I knocked.
No answer.
The door wasn’t locked.
I walked in.
The house was clean.
Too clean.
No signs of a woman living there.
No woman’s clothing.
No smell of food.
No warmth.
I went upstairs.
One room had men’s clothes.
Another looked like an office, barely used.
And the last one —
My legs nearly gave out.
Boxes.
So many boxes.
Filled with cash.
My mind went blank.
At that moment, I heard the door open downstairs.
“Mom.”
It was his voice.
I ran.
There was Marcus — thinner, more tired, but still my son.
We hugged without speaking for a long time.
Then I asked:
“What kind of life is this?”
He looked at the floor.
Then he whispered:
“Mom… I never really got married.”
I felt the world shatter.
The money wasn’t from a wife.
It wasn’t from a happy life.
He had given up ten years of his life to earn it.
He wasn’t a husband.
He wasn’t free.
He was a man trapped in a contract — and he still had two years left.
If he broke it early, he would have to pay back nearly a million dollars.
That was why he never came home.
That was why the house had no life in it.
That was why there were no photos.
