Marcus stood still.
I saw his hand tremble — not from fear, but because the pain had finally found a name.
“Do you know what I regret most?” he asked her.
She waited.
“It’s not those ten years. It’s that I believed I didn’t deserve another life.”
She looked up at him.
No one spoke.
The wind came through the open door.
The soup smelled the same as it always did.
Marcus took a breath.
“I don’t hate you anymore,” he said.
Then:
“But there’s nothing left between us either.”
Li Mei nodded and didn’t argue.
She turned around and left slowly, like someone losing something important but no longer having the right to keep it.
When the door closed, I went to my son and took his hand.
“Are you okay?”
He smiled — a real smile, the kind I had been waiting ten years to see again.
