Chapter 16
Sofia could not sleep with the bedroom door closed.
So we left it open.
She hated rooms without windows.
So we moved her into the east suite where morning light reached the bed before seven.
She ate small meals.
Often.
Nobody watched the plate.
Nobody asked whether she finished.
Clara visited when she wanted.
Some days she called her Sofia.
Once, by accident, she said Mom.
Then immediately started crying.
Sofia cried too.
I thought I should fix it.
I did not.
They did not need me solving their relationship.
They needed time without Helena arranging it.
My own relationship with Sofia was harder.
She remembered the husband I was at twenty-eight.
I was not that man anymore.
She was not the same woman either.
One night we sat in the garden.
She looked at my beard and smiled faintly.
“You look older.”
“So do you.”
Bad answer.
She laughed.
Real laughter.
First time.
I felt something inside me loosen.
Then she said:
“I hated you sometimes.”
I nodded.
“I know.”
“No. You don’t.”
I waited.
“When Helena told me you knew, I believed her some days.”
That hurt.
“I imagined you upstairs with Clara, choosing not to open the wall.”
I looked away.
Sofia continued.
“I needed someone to hate.”
“Fair.”
She studied me.
“You’re not going to tell me it wasn’t my fault?”
“No.”
Her eyebrows lifted.
“I’m going to tell you Helena built the lie.”
I looked at her.
“But you lived inside it. You get to decide what it did to you.”
She nodded slowly.
That answer mattered.
Then she reached across the bench.
Not for my hand.
For my signet ring.
She touched it once.
“You still wear this.”
“Yes.”
“You always hated it.”
“I still do.”
Another smile.
We were not rebuilding a marriage yet.
May you like
We were meeting each other again.
That was enough.
