I stopped.
David answered quietly.
“I know.”
My heart began pounding.
The woman spoke again.
“You can’t keep doing this.”
I stepped into the courtyard.
David turned.
His face immediately lost its color.
“Who is she?” I demanded.
The woman looked at me with tears in her eyes.
“My name is Clara.”
David closed his eyes.
“She’s my daughter.”
I stared at him.
“Your daughter?”
He nodded.
Then he told me the truth.
Our meeting hadn’t been accidental.
David had recognized me from photographs online.
And the reason he had deliberately approached me was connected to something that had happened nearly four decades earlier.
Something involving my husband.
Michael had been having an affair with David’s late wife, Ruth.
For eleven years.
I felt as though the ground had disappeared beneath my feet.
Michael and I had been married for thirty-nine years.
I had cared for him during his illness.
I had held his hand during his final days.
And I had believed that I knew the man I married.
Now David was telling me that decades earlier, Michael and Ruth had maintained a secret relationship that stretched across several cities.
After Ruth died, David discovered a box hidden among her belongings.
Inside were more than forty letters from Michael.
There were photographs too.
Photographs of my family.
Photographs of a life I had believed was mine alone.
Then David handed me a faded envelope.
My name was written across the front in Michael’s unmistakable handwriting.
I couldn’t open it.
Not there.
Not with David watching.
Instead, I asked him the question that hurt most.
“Why did you come after me?”
David looked ashamed.
“At first, I wanted answers. I wanted to understand who Michael was and what happened between them.”
“And then?”
“I saw you in Valletta.”
He swallowed.
“You looked lost. I recognized you from photographs I’d found. I knew exactly who you were.”
“So our meeting was planned?”
“Not exactly. But I knew who you were. I should have told you.”
He admitted that he had initially approached me because of the secret connecting our late spouses.
But somewhere during those days together, his feelings had changed.
That didn’t make the deception disappear.
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