The room fell into a soft hush, like a chapel after the last hymn. Althea told me how, after our separation, she visited a children’s shelter in Tlaquepaque to deliver donated books. A boy sat in a corner with a broken pencil, drawing houses and trees. He looked up.
She saw a loneliness that matched her own. She asked his name. Daniel, he said. She kept it, not because it was easy, but because it was already his, and because it was the name we once dreamed for a child we never had.
“I know,” she answered, with a brave half laugh. “That is part of why it took me so long to tell you. Every time he smiled, I saw a piece of you too.”
Outside, the rain traced the window. Inside, we faced the only thing that could help us now, which was the truth spoken gently.
“Why did you not tell me sooner,” I asked.
“I thought silence would protect you,” she said. “I thought you had moved on, and I did not want to reopen wounds. I told myself I was freeing you from an imperfect partner. In the end, I learned that love is not a report you pass or fail. It is a practice.”
We stood there with the old rug under our feet and years between us. Then she asked if I wanted to meet Daniel. I nodded before I had decided, as if my heart already knew the answer.
