The Most Beautiful Mom

Grace Reed was born with a birthmark across her face and has been called ugly for it all her life. She raises two sons on her own with very little money. The younger, Lorenzo Slater, never holds her face against her. The older, Xavier Slater, does. Lorenzo goes into the water one day and does not come back, and everyone takes him for drowned. Grace raises Xavier the rest of the way alone. Once he is grown he hides where he came from, borrows money from her to pay for a wedding into a rich family, and when the day comes he tells the guests he does not know her. Lorenzo survived. He was carried to the city and grew up there, and by the time he finds his mother again he is running a company. He puts himself between her and the people who have been humiliating her, and collects from each of them in turn. Grace, who has nothing to work with except her own decency and her willingness to keep going, ends up with the regard of the same people who used to look past her.