Bella walked into the hallway from what I remembered as the kitchen. Drying her hands on a dish towel.
She looked up. For several seconds that stretched into what felt like hours, neither of us moved.
Neither of us spoke or even seemed to breathe.
Time did something strange and elastic in that moment.
She had changed, obviously. She was thirty-two now, not eighteen.
Her hair was shorter, falling to her shoulders instead of halfway down her back the way it had in high school.
She was wearing jeans and a paint-stained sweater. It suggested she’d been working on something artistic.
There were fine lines near her eyes that hadn’t been there before. Evidence of years of smiling and living and experiencing things I knew nothing about.
But it was unmistakably, fundamentally her. The same Bella I’d fallen in love with at thirteen.
Just refined and matured and even more beautiful for the evidence of time and experience.
“Chris?” she said quietly, almost like a question. Like she wasn’t entirely sure I was real.
“Is that really you?”
“I’m sorry,” I said. It was the only thing that made any sense.
The only thing that felt remotely adequate. “I should have come back years ago. I should have come back right away.”
“I’m so sorry.”
She set the dish towel down slowly on a small table in the hallway. Her eyes never leaving my face.
Like she was afraid I might disappear if she looked away.
“You read it,” she said.
It wasn’t a question. She knew.
I nodded, not trusting my voice to work properly.
Her eyes filled with tears. But she didn’t let them fall, not yet.
She crossed the space between us slowly, carefully. Like she was approaching something wild that might bolt at any sudden movement.
“You didn’t read it back then,” she said softly. It wasn’t an accusation.
Just a statement of fact. Something she’d figured out long ago.
“I couldn’t,” I said, my voice cracking. “I thought if I opened it, I wouldn’t be able to get on that plane.”
“And I was terrified that if I stayed, I’d end up resenting you. For being the reason I gave up my dream.”
“Or resenting myself for not having the courage to pursue it.”
She swallowed hard. I watched a tear finally escape down her cheek.
“I wondered for years if you ever opened it. If you ever would.”
“Or if you’d just carried it around without ever knowing what it said.”
“I carried it everywhere,” I admitted. “It moved to Germany with me. Then to Boston.”
“I’ve had it for fourteen years. I just never let myself know what it said until last week.”
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