A wealthy man is stunned to see his dead mother’s earrings on his maid’s ears and to hear the incredible story she revealed about his own origins.

Richard Collins was devastated when his mother passed away at the age of fifty-six. The bright and vivacious Betsy had succumbed to a sudden heart attack, just after Mrs. Daras, who’d been with the family for 40 years, had retired.

Richard looked around his huge, empty house and felt the crushing silence pressing down on him. He needed help to run the house. He was buried in work and could hardly take on the house too. He decided to advertise for a full-time maid, but what he got was trouble.

At first, Betsy Malone, the maid the agency sent, seemed perfectly acceptable. She was quiet and polite, and if she was not as diligent as she might have been, Richard turned a blind eye.

Just having another person around, hearing footsteps, and unexpected sounds made him feel less alone, less as if he was living in a tomb. He was sitting in his office, talking to one of his Japanese representatives on Zoom when he noticed Betsy’s earings.

She’d come in and Richard had gestured her to clean up a coffee cup at the end of his desk. As she leaned over to pick up the cup, a strand of Betsy’s carefully arranged hair slipped and Richard saw them.

Betsy was wearing delicate gold earrings inset with lapiz lazuli and a shimmer of pavé diamonds. Betsy was wearing his mother’s favorite earrings, the earrings he’d buried her with.

Richard quickly ended the call to his representative and stared at Betsy. Suddenly it seemed as if there was something both sly and familiar about her face, almost as if he’d seen her before.

“Where did you get those earrings?” Richard asked in a cold voice.

Betrayal is always repaid in kind.

Betsy’s hand rose involuntarily to finger the earrings. Then she let her hand drop, straightened her shoulders, and looked quite like a different woman. “So the game’s up. I shouldn’t have worn the earrings…”

Richard sprang up from behind his desk and walked towards Betsy. “Those were my mother’s favorite earrings! I buried her with them. So you tell me where you got them, or I call the police!”

Betsy positively smirked. “Why, Ricky dear!” she sneered. “Shirley was my sister and mom’s favorite, but she gave us identical earrings that one time…And by the way, I AM your mother! “

Richard was struck dumb by the outrageous assertion. “What?”

“Don’t be so rude, dear,” Betsy mocked. “Didn’t Shirley teach you better? Say ‘excuse me, mother?'”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Richard shouted.

Betsy sat on the edge of Richard’s desk and smiled. “Shirley was my sister, my baby sister. She was always the dutiful one. Me? I wanted more from life…”

She winked at Richard and reached into her pocket, drawing out a packet of cigarettes and a lighter. She lit one up without even asking Richard for permission. She drew smoke into her lungs greedily then blew it out.

“Shirley was so boring…’Yes mother, thank you, mother…’ But I wanted more from my life,” Betsy said. “I didn’t just want to marry some fat small-town geek my mother approved of and run the business. So when I was 20, I ran off to Las Vegas and became a showgirl. And boy did I show that town a thing or two!”

Richard was deciding very quickly that he didn’t like Betsy one little bit. She went on: “So I took up with a Mafia guy, and I ended up knocked up. I wasn’t going to raise some brat, but I thought having Giusseppe’s kid might be a good investment.

“I came back home intending to dump the kid on my dear mom only to find that she’d died. So I dumped you on Shirley,” Betsy laughed mockingly. “What a chump! She immediately started cooing over you. I left the next day, back to Vegas. My mother had left her everything, I didn’t get a penny, and now YOU got everything! But I’m here for my share.”

“You have no share,” Richard said coldly. “Not of my money or in my life. Get out!”

“Oh, Ricky darling,” Betsy cooed. “Did I tell you where your daddy is now? He’s in jail, poor dear! Racketeering and murder. Isn’t that so inspiring? How do you think people will react when they learn your daddy is a convicted mobster?”

“What do you want?” Richard asked.

“Two million in cash to start with,” Betsy said. “We can talk about the rest of the inheritance later.” Richard agreed, but he was thinking furiously about how to turn the tables on Betsy…

Two days later, he showed up at the trailer park where Betsy lived and delivered a suitcase full of money. “Thank you, Ricky!” Betsy cried mockingly.

“Arent you ashamed to blackmail your own son?” Richard asked bitterly. “It’s the lowest of crimes!”

“Blackmail?” asked Betsy. “But it’s my specialty! Back in Vegas, I squeezed more country bumpkins than I can count…You’re just my latest customer!” Betsy was laughing and Richard turned and walked out the door.

Betsy turned to the case and started fingering the wads of cash greedily. Then she gasped. Only the top layer was real money! Underneath it was all paper! She turned the case upside down and frantically rummaged through the paper.

Then a big envelope fell out. Betsy thought the envelope was strangely heavy, so she turned it over, and out spilled 30 silver dollars and a note: “I recorded our conversation. Unless you want to join my father in prison, you’d better leave town or I turn it over to the police. You are despicable. You’d betray your own flesh and blood for money? You are not my mother. Shirley was my mother.”

Betsy sat looking at the coins in her hand for a long, long time. She was getting too old for the Las Vegas scams, soon she’d be even older and she was alone in the world…

A year later, she reached out to Richard and asked him to give his Aunt Betsy a second chance. Richard thought about what his mother would have done, and he invited her for lunch. It took a long time, but Richard gave Betsy a second chance — and she did her best to deserve it.

What can we learn from this story?

• Love and devotion are what makes a parent, not biology. Betsy may have been Richard’s biological mother, but his real mother was Shirley, who loved and cared for him all his life.
• Betrayal is always repaid in kind. Betsy never imagined that Richard would trick her into confessing her crimes and turn the tables on her.
• Share this story with your friends. It might brighten their day and inspire them.

If you enjoyed this story, you might like this one about a boy who lives alone with his hard-working single mother and finds a wallet filled with money. He returns it to the address he finds in it and it changes his life.

This account is inspired by our reader’s story and written by a professional writer. Any resemblance to actual names or locations is purely coincidental. All images are for illustration purposes only. Share your story with us; maybe it will change someone’s life.