Woman Searches for Her Father for Years, Finds out He Works with Her in the Same Grocery Store — Story of the Day

A woman decides to find her bio father, but all she has is a vague memory of him and a few old letters. What’ll happen when she discovers he’s been near her all these years, at the same grocery store where she works?

Jemma sighed as she ran her fingers across her father’s initials on the yellowed sheets of paper from her drawer. “Darren P.” it read.

Jemma had never met Darren as an adult, but her father’s letters made him sound like a close friend who adored her more than anything else.

Every time Jemma read those letters, a spark of hope ignited in her heart that she’d find him. But she had given up hope deep down. After all, it had been years since she had been looking for him, and there had been no progress.

Then, on her birthday, she received a message from a stranger wishing her all the happiness in the world. Tears rose in Jemma’s eyes when she read the name at the end of the message. “Your father… Darren,” it said…

Jemma was a little girl who loved pink dresses and pigtails when she was adopted by her foster parents. Lisa and Aaron gave her a loving home and never hid the truth about her adoption.

As a little kid, Jemma had met her father once when he visited her. She had rolled on his shoulders and played with him, and that was one of the happiest days of her childhood. But after that day, Jemma never saw him again.

As an adult, she didn’t remember his face, but she never forgot how happy she had been to meet him. Then one day, Lisa and Aaron showed her the letters he was writing to them, and Jemma cried as she read them.

“What about my mom? Why hasn’t he written anything about her?” Jemma asked Lisa and Aaron as she finished reading the letters.

Lisa pressed her lips together. “She passed away, honey,” she explained. “Some of his letters were misplaced, and I recall him mentioning your mother was no longer alive. He had written that he could not afford to raise you and had placed you in a shelter.”

“Yet he came to see us,” Jemma sighed. “He didn’t abandon me… It wasn’t his fault…”

“No, it wasn’t,” Aaron agreed. “But he visited us only once when you were 10, and then he never showed up. We expected him to return someday, but he didn’t… And then the letters stopped.”

That was the day Jemma decided to track down Darren. She went to the address on the envelope, but the house was deserted, and the last tenant had moved out years ago. Jemma was lost and had no idea where to find him because the agency where she was adopted had also closed long ago.

Every night from then on, Jemma sat with the letters and reared them, hoping to spot something that would help...