A man visited his mother’s house after her death and discovered an old photo of her with another boy who looked very much like her. He then decided to find the boy in the photo to discover his identity. This is how he learned a shocking secret about his mother’s past.
While most people are particularly attached to their childhood homes, Ben Dixon was determined to get rid of his old Texas property after his mother’s death. A week after the funeral, he had already contacted a real estate agency to find buyers.
To his surprise, he quickly found a couple interested in buying the house.
Ben and his wife Cassandra came from New York that week to meet with the potential buyers. They were inspecting the house with the agent, Mr. Franklin, when Cassandra happened to come across one of her childhood albums.
“Hey, Ben!” said Cassandra. “Look at this. You were very adorable as a kid! I’m curious if there are any other albums in here. Also, I suggest you reconsider selling the house, honey. It does contain your memories, after all.”
Ben shrugged. “To tell you the truth, I didn’t have many happy memories here, Cassandra. Mom and I never spoke after I left. You know, I could never understand her. She never told me about my dad, even after I begged her several times. I saw other kids at baseball games with their dads, but I would just sit alone in a corner, thinking about mine.”
“Oh, Ben,” Cassandra gave him a hug and continued. “I’m sure she had her reasons. You know she loved you. She gave you a good education, helped you become a lawyer, and raised you on her own. I’m sure it wasn’t easy for her being a single mother, Ben. You have to understand that she wouldn’t have done all this if she didn’t love you.”
“Yeah, whatever…”
Cassandra advised Ben to rethink selling the house. | Source: Pexels
“Excuse me, Mr. and Mrs. Dixon,” it was Mr. Franklin interrupting them. “Our guests are here. May we begin the tour?”
“Oh, sure, we’ll come,” Cassandra said, smiling. Then she turned to Ben. “There’s no need to rush, Ben, remember that. You can always refuse to sell the house. That decision is yours.”
“I have no doubt about it. I’m going to sell the Cassandra house. I don’t want to stay here another minute, believe me. And as for that album, well… I wish she’d put her son above all these pursuits. Just put him in his place. We don’t need this.”
“No way, Ben. I’m keeping it! Our children should know how handsome their father was when he was little.”
“Fine, do whatever you want!” Ben said casually.
Cassandra kept the album in her bag and made a final touch before meeting with the new buyers. Their meeting lasted about an hour, during which they took a complete tour of the house and discussed the final price. After the meeting, Ben and Cassandra decided to eat at a restaurant in town.
Ben and Cassandra stopped at a restaurant for lunch. | Source: Pexels
When they arrived, Ben told his wife to go in first because he wanted to park the car a little further away. Cassandra got out of the car and walked away, not realizing she had left her purse in the car. Ben noticed and grabbed the purse from his seat after parking the car.
Suddenly, the album fell out and caught Ben’s attention. “You really took it, Cassandra? Seriously? Are you still a kid?” he grumbled, picking it up. But his curiosity eventually got the better of him, and he began flipping through the photos.
He glanced at all the pictures of him and his mother, and for a split second, he didn’t notice tears welling up in his eyes.
He wiped them off with his hand and put the album back in Cassandra’s bag. At that moment, he noticed something had fallen onto the floor of the car. It appeared to be one of the photos, so he picked it up to put it back in the album. But when he examined it closely, he couldn’t believe his eyes.
It was a picture of him and his mother with a strange boy who looked exactly like him! “What’s this all about? Who is he?” Ben wondered. He turned the picture over and noticed a caption: “Ben and Ronnie, 1986.”
The boy looked a lot like Ben. | Source: Pexels
“Who is Ronnie? And how did Mom know him? Is he… No way! He can’t be my brother!” Ben was puzzled. He rushed to the restaurant and showed the photo to Cassandra. She was shocked too.
“Damn it, Ben! I swear he looks like your brother! No one will disagree!”
“I know, but if he really is… Why… Why didn’t Mom ever tell me anything about him?”
“Let’s take it easy, Ben. We can try to find him. It might not be easy, but it’s not impossible.”
“Well, I have no choice, Cassandra. I want to know who this little boy is. I have to find him…”
That day, on his way home from the restaurant, Ben tried to look up Ronnie on Facebook, but without success. None of the users named Ronnie looked even remotely like him. So he went back to his mother’s house and rummaged through her closet to find the hospital records where she had given birth.
It took a while, but he finally found them. Unfortunately, the papers had turned yellow, and he couldn’t even clearly make out the hospital’s name. However, he made some guesses based on the partially faded letters and eventually found the hospital online.
Ben contacted the hospital. | Source: Pexels
He called the hospital staff, but since so much time had passed since Mrs. Dixon’s delivery, most of the hospital staff had changed, and they said it would take them some time to gather the information he requested.
Ben had no patience for this, so he decided to go straight to the hospital.
He begged a nurse to let him look through the stockroom files since it was urgent. When he started begging her, the nurse couldn’t say no. She gave him an hour to search and find what he needed.
Ben eagerly searched through the files until he came across his mother’s. But once he started reading it, he couldn’t stop crying.
Reports indicated that his mother had given birth to two boys but left one of the children in the hospital. The little one was then sent to a neurological facility, run by the hospital. Ben couldn’t believe his eyes! Ronnie was his brother! He retrieved the facility’s address from the file and decided to go see Ronnie.
However, when he arrived, he couldn’t stop crying when he saw his brother. It was an exact replica of him, lying on a bed, surrounded by syringes and hospital medications. A nurse revealed that Ronnie’s brain had been showing abnormalities since birth, resulting in memory and behavioral problems.
Ronnie was a disabled child. | Source: Pexels
“Do you know anything about the woman who left him here? I mean, he was brought here from a hospital, right?” Ben asked.
“Well,” the nurse began. “Perhaps our oldest nurse can answer that for you.”
She called Nurse Julie, who revealed to Ben that their mother had abandoned Ronnie. “I was there when that boy arrived here. His mother came to see him one evening. She’d finally found the address of the institute and came to observe him. She was hiding to watch him, but I caught her. I think you were there too. She took you both to a lake, and I took a picture for her. You were both very young. She told me at first that she was a relative, then she told me her real story: that she was his mother.”
It turned out that Mrs. Dixon had abandoned Ronnie because she was a single mother and couldn’t afford to raise two children after her boyfriend had left her. On top of that, she knew Ronnie had a disability that would require special care.
After learning this, Ben decided he wouldn’t abandon Ronnie. He brought him home and told Cassandra the whole story, and she immediately accepted Ben’s request to care for him for the rest of his life.
Ben was definitely upset that his mother had abandoned Ronnie, but the nurse’s words resonated with him for a long time. “She did it because her boyfriend had abandoned her.”
“Maybe that’s why Mom didn’t tell me about our dad, Ron. But don’t worry, you won’t be alone much longer,” he assured his brother, who was clapping his hands like a young child. “Your brother is here. And he’ll watch over you until death do us part.”
What can we learn from this story?
- Don’t keep secrets from your children. If Mrs. Dixon had told Ben about Ronnie, he would have taken her in sooner.
- Sometimes we are forced by circumstances . Mrs. Dixon didn’t want to abandon Ronnie, but she had no choice, as she could only afford to raise one child.
Read also: After the death of her husband, a flight attendant meets a man on the plane who looks exactly like her
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This story is inspired by one of our readers’ stories and written by a professional writer. Any resemblance to real names or places is purely coincidental. All images are used for illustrative purposes only. Share your story with us; it might just change someone’s life. If you’d like to share your story, email us at [email protected].
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