CHAPTER 14
My Soulmate
I came out of the bedroom with a manila envelope, the kind you associate more with bank paperwork than with romantic gestures, and handed it to him without a word.
“What is this?” he asked, turning it over in his hands, as if the envelope could give away its contents by its weight.
“Read it. It’s the least you deserve, after what we did to you.”
He opened it. I watched his face change as he read the document, line by line.
“No, how could you,” he said, looking up, genuinely alarmed. “You’re not to blame for anything.”
“Admit it: you still hold some resentment toward my father. Maybe if that day he hadn’t thrown you out the way he did, your father would still be alive.”
“No, I can’t accept this. Really, Daniel, I’d feel terrible.”
“Well, I’m the one who feels terrible,” I said. “This farm is such a small thing compared to how much my dad left me. You know what? I want us to go there. I want to walk that enormous place beside you. Will you come?”
“Really? Are you serious?”
“Very serious. So, what do you say?”
“Yes, of course I will,” he said, the excitement trying unsuccessfully to disguise itself as seriousness. “But on one condition.”
“What?”
“That you come with me to see my mother. She’ll be so happy when she sees you.”
“Of course.”
“I’m so excited!” he exclaimed, with a smile that for a second brought back to me, without my asking, the boy I had played marbles with on a dirt road twenty years ago.
“But first,” I said, “I want you to come with me somewhere else.”
“Where?”
“It’s a surprise, and surprises aren’t told.”
“You know?” I continued, stepping a little closer. “You were right. Now I know it exists.”
“What?”
“My soulmate.”
We stood staring at each other, in a silence that no longer needed any more words, until at last I leaned toward him and kissed him.
The living room light slowly faded, leaving only a single overhead spotlight on the two of us, as if the whole apartment had decided, for once, to leave only us at the center of something.
Loose images of the two of them in Paris are projected, as in a dream: walking hand in hand along the Seine, laughing in front of a café, the Eiffel Tower lit up in the background against an already dark sky.
If I’ve learned anything from life, it’s that after the darkest night the sun always rises again.
I believed my story would end marked by pain, but destiny showed me there were still pages left to write. Pages filled with love, hope, and happiness.
So never stop believing. Because even if the road is hard, life can always surprise us when we least expect it.
Thank you for keeping me company.
THE END