Eli carries her words across the table, each syllable heavy. Grace’s eyes widen, her voice shaking. “And you, Marcel? Did you love her?”
The answer leaves me on a single breath. “From the moment she smiled at me. From the moment I knew her name. And I never stopped. Not after she left, not when the years went on without her. Not even when I thought she had forgotten me.”
Grace’s hand flies to her mouth, her breath uneven as Eli relays my confession.
Clara leans forward, her gaze locked on mine, burning. “I tried to be the wife they expected me to be, Grace. I tried to quiet my heart, but I couldn’t. I woke every morning wishing it was him beside me. I lived my life bound by duty, but my soul…my soul never left Marcel. But then the time passed, and after my letter was sent back, I thought he had moved on.”
Her words fracture as Eli repeats them, his own voice thick with feeling. Grace shakes her head slowly, her eyes brimming with tears. “So all those years—you both thought the other had let go.”
My fists clench on the table, the fury of decades burning through me. “I thought she chose that life. I thought what we had that summer faded away for her.”
Clara’s tears fall faster, her voice breaking into a whisper. “And I didn’t have the strength to come back to you.”
The silence after is unbearable, heavy with everything stolen from us. Grace finally exhales, her voice raw. “My God. You never stopped loving each other.”
Clara’s tears spill freely now, her voice cracking as she confesses, “I think a part of my soul stayed here. With Marcel, waiting for me to come retrieve it.”
A tremor runs through me. “And mine stayed with Clara,” I say, the words breaking out of me like they’ve been caged too long. “Even after death, I kept waiting. Waiting for her, praying that love might bridge what time and flesh tore apart.”
Grace presses her hands to her cheeks, her breath a broken rhythm. Isaac steadies her with a touch, but his eyes never leave my space, as if he can feel the enormity of what is being laid bare.
Clara leans closer, her voice stripped to its truth. “Tell her, Eli. Tell her a woman can laugh, can host dinners, can raise children, and still feel hollow when the man she loves is not beside her. Tell her that I’m sorry I didn’t love the man she thought was her grandfather. That I’m sorry I lied.”
Eli repeats every word, his voice rough, and Grace lets out a sob that shakes her whole frame.
I reach across the table, letting my fingers hover close enough to Clara’s hand that the space between us hums with what we’ve always been. Her breath hitches, her gaze locking with mine.
“Tell her,” I say, my voice raw, “that I know her grandmother did what she believed was safe and right at the time. Tell her I wish I could have known her father. But I’m just so happy you’re both here now. Tell her that love like ours doesn’t fade. It endures. It burns through time, through distance, through death itself. I loved her grandmother then and I will love her until the world no longer remembers our names.”
Eli’s voice carries the words into the room. Grace wipes her face, laughter breaking through her tears in disbelief.
“You found each other again,” she whispers, wonder filling her tone. “After everything, after all those years, you’re here. And love brought you back.”
Clara closes her eyes, her tears falling freely now, her lips shaping the truth she cannot keep hidden. “Yes,” she breathes.
I can’t stop looking at her. My firefly. My only. The one who has haunted every sunrise and every night sky.
The silence after our confessions feels alive, humming in the air, pressing close around us. Grace wipes her cheeks, her breath uneven as she studies the space between Clara and me—the space only Eli can bridge.
“Why didn’t you leave?” she asks suddenly, her voice sharp with youth, with the indignation of someone who has never had their choices stripped bare. She looks at Clara’s space, eyes pleading. “Why didn’t you fight harder? Leave everything behind and just…be with him?”
Clara bows her head; her hands knotted in her lap. “Because I was raised in a world where duty outweighed desire. Where a woman’s rebellion wasn’t brave, it was ruin. I thought if I broke away, I’d destroy not only my own future but my family’s standing, my parents’ love. Fear kept me where I didn’t belong.”
Eli speaks to Grace, but Clara’s eyes never leave mine. And in them, I see the truth she doesn’t say aloud:I was afraid of losing everything.
Grace swallows hard, her knuckles white around the napkin. “And you lived like that? Your whole life?”
Clara nods once, tears threatening again. “Every smile I wore for Phillip, every photograph we posed for—it was all a mask. Inside, I mourned what I had lost. What I chose not to fight for. Him—” Her gaze pierces me, steady and raw. “Always him.”
The ache inside me burns hotter, but I don’t let it break me. “And I lived in waiting,” I add quietly. “I worked the land, I gave my strength to this ranch, but no one ever touched what belonged to Clara. My heart stayed hers. Untouched. Undivided.”
Eli repeats, his voice shaking now.
Eli pushes back from the table, his chair scraping across the worn floorboards. His eyes sweep over each of us, steady but weary. “That’s enough for one night,” he says, voice low but firm. “We’ll think clearer in the morning.”
Grace doesn’t move. Her hand is pressed tight against her chest, her face pale but burning with emotion. She looks at Clara’s space, then at me, her eyes wide, shining. “Before anything else,” she whispers, the tremor in her voice betraying the steel beneath it, “I need to know. What do you want now? Both of you.”
The question stills everything. Even the house seems to hush. In Clara’s eyes I see it all—the ache, the longing, the hope we never dared to speak until now.
