Claire kept her eyes on the stage.
19 Years of Sacrifice
Evan Martinez stood in his graduation gown.
Valedictorian. Scholarship recipient. Future engineering student.
But to Claire, he was something more important than all of that.
He was the boy she raised when nobody else would.
His mother disappeared when he was a baby. His father was never in the picture. And everyone in the family had said the same thing:
“Someone else will have to take him.”
Except Claire.
She took him.
And never once called it a burden.
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