After my wife passed away, I kicked her son out of the house. He had never been my biological child. I was certain I would never see him again, but ten years later, I received a very strange phone call and learned something shocking about the boy I had thrown out. 

**Part 1**

My wife died unexpectedly. That morning, she had been standing in the kitchen, getting ready to go out and reminding me to buy groceries on my way home. By the next day, she was gone.

After the funeral, the house became unrecognizable. Everything remained in its place: her cup, her clothes in the closet, her books beside the bed. Yet it felt as though the very air had disappeared from our home.

And her son was still living there with me.

When I met my wife, she already had a child. She rarely spoke about his biological father. All I knew was that the man had disappeared from their lives long ago.

When we married, the boy was six years old. I provided for him, bought his clothes, paid for his schooling, and took him to the doctor whenever he was sick. From the outside, many people considered me a good stepfather.

But deep down, things were different. I had never truly accepted him as my own child.

While my wife was alive, I tried not to show it. She loved her son more than anything in the world, and I understood that hurting him would hurt her most of all.

But after my wife’s death, everything changed. I could barely stand to look at him.

He was sixteen at the time. He hardly spoke, spent entire days in his room, and sometimes just stared out the window.

For some reason, his behavior irritated me more and more. Back then, I failed to understand that while I had lost my wife, the poor boy had lost his only remaining parent.

One evening, we had a terrible argument. I don’t even remember how it started. Probably over something insignificant.

But at some point, I said something I would spend years trying to forget.

“Pack your things and get out. You’re nothing to me.”

He looked at me so calmly that it only made me angrier.

“I don’t care where you go or what happens to you.”

I expected him to argue or beg me to let him stay. But the boy said nothing.

He simply went upstairs, packed a few belongings into an old backpack, and walked out of the house twenty minutes later.

I didn’t even try to stop him.

A few months later, I sold the house. I moved to another neighborhood, started a business, and gradually built an entirely different life.

Ten years passed.

Sometimes I thought about the boy and wondered where he was. But I never tried to find him.