A caring dad decides to put his daughter in a shelter for a while so he can get three jobs to help pay for their future. While he is at work, he runs into an old friend who tells him that his child is not his.

“I’ll keep my word, honey. Give me a few months, and we’ll be together again. Wait for daddy, alright?” Harry tells his daughter Mia with tears in his eyes.

“Daddy, please don’t leave me here! Who took mommy? She cried, “Leave me with my mom instead!”

“Your mom…” Harry is unsure. “Your mom has been away for a long time on business. He said, “I don’t know when she’ll be back,” to keep his daughter from feeling sad. The truth was that his wife died of cancer a month ago.

He gave his daughter a tight hug and said he would see her again the next day. “You promise?” Mia asked him.

“I’ll keep my word,” Harry said with a nod and his pinky out.

That night, Harry went to his job as the night shift porter at a warehouse. He had just finished working for another six hours and had two hours to rest in the locker room before heading to his next job as a cashier at a grocery store.

He met an old friend of his late wife Samantha while he was working there. He told her, “Hey, Ava.” How are you doing?

“Samantha told me that the man, not you, was Mia’s father.”
Harry didn’t understand why Ava looked at him with a guilty look on her face. She said, “Hi, Harry.” “How do you feel? She asked, “Where is Mia?”

Harry told her that he had to work three jobs and she had to leave Mia at a shelter. He told Ava, “Don’t worry.” “I’ll only work at these jobs for a few months. Once I have enough money to pay off the house in full, I’ll take her back and we’ll never be apart again.”

Harry was asked by Ava if he wanted to go to lunch. “I want to tell you something. “I should have told you a long time ago, but I was afraid of what Samantha would do to me,” she told him after she invited him to lunch.

Harry said, “Of course.” “Come on, let’s go to my favorite cafe,” he said as he took off his apron to eat his lunch.

While they were eating, Harry told them that he had been working hard to make enough money so that he could raise Mia by himself. “We spent all of our money trying to save Samantha,” he said. “We were only a few months away from owning our house free and clear… But now, if I work all the time, I can do it even faster.”

Ava told her, “You should take care of yourself.” “It’s not healthy at all to have three jobs.”

Harry gave a shrug. “I would do anything for my daughter, even if it meant that I wouldn’t see her for a while.”

“I’m sorry that I had to say this,” Ava said out of the blue. “But the truth is that Samantha got drunk at a bar seven years ago and met a man. They began to talk, and then one thing led to another…”

At this point, Harry was starting to have trouble breathing. He was sure he wasn’t ready for what Ava was about to say next.

“Samantha told me that the man, not you, was Mia’s father. Ava said, “She didn’t want to tell you because she saw how happy you were when she told you she was pregnant.”

Harry was too upset to go back to work after hearing the terrible news. He went straight home and cried for hours there. He yelled to no one in particular, “What did I do to deserve this?”

He didn’t have any family, his wife had been unfaithful to him, and the daughter he loved so much wasn’t even his. When he realized this, he thought it would probably be better for Mia to be taken in by a rich family than to move back in with him.

Harry would not go to the shelter for two years. During this time, the store where he used to work as a cashier promoted him to manager. He was able to pay off his mortgage and buy a small, cheap car.

One day, Harry was running the store when he got a call from the animal shelter. The man on the other line said, “It’s about Mia.”

The man said that Mia had to have surgery and a liver transplant right away. He said, “If you want to donate, you should get to the hospital as soon as you can.”

Harry’s heart hurt when he heard that Mia was in pain, but he knew he couldn’t do anything to help. He went to the hospital and told the staff there that he wasn’t her real father.

The nurse told the man, “We can still test you.” “You can still give to her if you are a match, if you want to.”

Harry realized that if he let Mia die, he wouldn’t be able to live with himself. He let them take some of his blood, which showed that he could give blood.

He said without fear, “I’ll do it.” He tried hard to forget Mia, but he still loved her and thought of her as his daughter. He had raised her, after all.

The operation took place and went well on the same day. Both Harry and Mia were put in the same room to rest and get better.

Harry woke up first, and as soon as he did, a nurse went to check on him. “Congratulations, Mr. Your daughter and you are both healthy. The nurse said, “She is very strong.”

Harry said with sadness, “She’s not my daughter.” “I thought she was, but it turns out that she wasn’t. He said, “I don’t even know who her father is, even though I’ve always been sure it was me.”

The nurse was feeling sorry for Harry, but she decided to say something about it. “Parents aren’t always the people who gave birth to us. They can also be the people who raised us. It doesn’t matter if your blood is in Mia’s veins or not. “In the end, she’s your daughter,” she told him.

The nurse was right, Harry realized. Mia had always thought of him as her father, and she always would. In the same way, she was his only daughter, and that would never change.

After they had both healed from their surgeries, Harry took Mia’s paperwork to the shelter. He told the manager, “I’d like to take my daughter home.”

Mia couldn’t help but cry when she heard this, and she hugged her father with all her strength. “I love you so much, dad. I’ve missed you.”

What does this story teach us?

Family doesn’t always mean blood. Harry was angry when he found out that his wife had been cheating on him, so he didn’t pick Mia up from the shelter when he said he would. In the end, he saw that wasn’t right and that he still loved Mia as his daughter.
Children shouldn’t have to pay for the mistakes their parents made. Mia had to deal with the effects of her mom’s cheating because she had to spend two years at a shelter by herself.

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