Her gaze flicks to me, eyes softening at the edges. “You’ve thought of everything.”
“Just want you comfortable,” I tell her, shutting the drawer carefully. My hands won’t stop fussing—straightening the quilt, checking the lamp wick, smoothing the curtain where it doesn’t need smoothing. I can’t seem to stop myself.
“Marcel,” she says gently, stopping me. Her voice is quiet but steady. “It’s enough. More than enough, it’s sweet that you’re making sure I’m comfortable.”
I turn to her, my chest tight with everything I want to say and nothing I trust myself to voice. Instead, I manage a nod, my voice rough. “If you need anything, just call. I’m right downstairs.”
She offers a faint smile, and in that moment, I’d give anything—my years, my soul—for her to feel at home here.
“Thank you,” she whispers.
Two simple words. But after years of silence, they feel like salvation.
I start toward the door, giving her space. “I’ll let you rest,” I say. “It’s been a long day.”
But her voice halts me.
“Marcel?”
I turn. She’s standing near the dresser, her hand resting lightly on its edge, her eyes unsure but searching. “Would you…stay? Just for a little while?”
My breath falters. For decades, I’ve prayed for her voice, her nearness, and now she’s asking me to stay. I nod, too quickly, and step back into the room. “Of course.”
I take the chair in the corner, but the distance between us feels unbearable. She sits on the edge of the bed, smoothing the quilt with nervous hands, her eyes fixed anywhere but on me. For a while, silence presses down, broken only by the soft brush of the curtains in the breeze.
Then Clara speaks. “It feels strange, doesn’t it? Sitting here like no time has passed when in truth…it’s been a lifetime.”
I lean forward, elbows braced on my knees. “I don’t want to pretend time hasn’t touched us. I want to know every bit of it. What happened when you left Hawthorn. What your life was like.”
Her eyes lift, wide and startled, as if she expected me to shy from the truth. Instead, she exhales and lowers her gaze. “You really want to know? All of it?”
I nod once, steady. “Every piece. I’ve carried you in my chest all these years, Clara, but it’s only been a shadow. I want to know your story.”
Her throat works around a swallow. She clasps her hands tightly in her lap, as though she can hold herself together by sheer force of will. “After I left Hawthorn…I tried to forget. I told myself it was just a summer, just a foolish mistake, before duty called me back. But the truth?” Her voice cracks. “I thought of you every single day. Even when I stood at the altar with another man’s name on my lips, you were the one I longed for.”
The words spear through me, sharp and sweet. I shift forward in the chair, drawn closer. “Then why, Clara? Why didn’t you run? Why didn’t you come back to me?”
Her tears brim, shining in the dim lamplight. “Because I was carrying your child and no one in my world would have forgiven me for that. My parents—God, Marcel, they would’ve destroyed me. My marriage was mainly for business, status. Then there was the fear of what people would say about Izzy and Jullian, even Ada and Frank. My parents made sure I smiled in photographs and played the dutiful wife, and I was too frightened, too bound to break free.”
The air leaves me in a ragged exhale. My fingers grip the edge of the chair. “If I had only known, Clara. I thought I’d been a fool to believe you ever wanted me.”
Her head shakes violently, curls slipping from their pins. “I never stopped wanting you. Not for a moment. My marriage was a cage, nothing more. I raised our son in silence, terrified he’d never know the truth of where he came from. And when I watched him grow, every kindness in him reminded me of you. That’s how I kept you with me. Through him.”
Her words rattle through me like loose glass. I stare at her hands twisting in her lap, at the tremble in her mouth, and something in me starts to fracture. For years, I built her into a holy figure in my memory—someone untouchable, beyond reproach. But sitting here now, with her confessions laid bare, I feel the heat of something darker rising up my throat.
I push up from the chair so suddenly that it scrapes against the floor. “Stop.” The word comes out low but sharp, and she flinches as if it cut her. “You talk about duty. About fear. About what your parents would have done, about status. And all this time, Clara, I thought you chose him over me. I thought you woke up one morning and decided you were done with us, that I wasn’t enough.”
Her breath catches, tears spilling fast now. “Marcel?—”
“No.” My voice cracks like a whip, years of swallowed grief suddenly raw. “Do you know what it was like for me? Waiting for letters that never came? Walking this ranch every morning, looking down the road, praying you’d appear? Thinking I was some boy you’d toyed with and discarded?” My fists clench at my sides. “I blamed myself. And all that time you were carrying my child and you didn’t come to me.”
She rises from the bed, reaching toward me, but her hand falters midair. “I was scared. I was so scared?—”
“I understand that” I snap, my chest heaving. “But don’t you think I wouldn’t have been terrified, too? But I would’ve stood with you. I would’ve fought for you, Clara. For our child. You never gave me that chance.”
For a long time, neither of us moves. The air between us feels different now—still thick with sorrow, but quieter somehow, softened by the truth finally laid bare.
Clara rises slowly and crosses to the small trunk at the foot of the bed. Her hands tremble as she unclasps it, rifling through carefully folded linens until she pulls out a weathered envelope.
