“Why are you here?” he asked calmly.
She looked around the small restaurant — the tables, the people eating, the warmth in the air.
Then she looked at him.
“You’re living well,” she said.
Not with power.
Not with accusation.
Just as a human sentence.
She told him she hadn’t come to ask him to return.
“I only came to ask for forgiveness.”
Her voice cracked slightly.
“I held onto you out of selfishness, out of fear of being alone, believing that money could compensate for everything. But I was wrong.”
Marcus stood still.
I saw his hand tremble — not from fear, but because the pain had finally found a name.
“Do you know what I regret most?” he asked her.
She waited.
“It’s not those ten years. It’s that I believed I didn’t deserve another life.”
She looked up at him.
No one spoke.
The wind came through the open door.
The soup smelled the same as it always did.
