“Did anything happen between you two before you left?”
“We kissed outside the restaurant that night.”
My stomach tightened, even though I’d guessed as much.
“You came home afterward,” I said.
“Yes.”
“You kissed me goodnight.”
She looked down. “Yes.”
For a moment, the coffee shop disappeared. I could see our bedroom that night, the lamp on her side, the book she’d left open, myself reaching for her in the dark without any idea what had already changed.
“Why not just tell me?”
“Because then I’d have to be the kind of person who did that.”
It was the first thing she’d said that felt completely true.
“And David?” I asked.
“He was charming when everything was going his way. We traveled. We spent money. But he didn’t trust me. Eventually he found out about the overlap. I told him we were basically broken up, and he asked why I’d still been wearing your ring in photographs taken after I met him.”
“And then?”
“He said he couldn’t build a relationship with someone who rewrote the last one to make herself look better. He was right.”
She rubbed her thumb against the bare place where my ring used to sit.
“I’m not here because David hurt me and I need a replacement,” she said. “But losing him forced me to look at what I’d done to you. I don’t know if you can believe that.”
“I believe you regret it.”
“I do.”
“That’s not the same as believing you’d make a different choice.”
Her eyes filled. “I know.”
I thought of the letter in my jacket. A single page Helen had prepared for me showing my beneficial interest in the trust and its estimated value. I’d brought it despite her warning.
I took it out.
“What is that?” Sophia asked.
“Something my father left me.”
I laid it on the table. She read the header, then the valuation. Her eyebrows pulled together.
“Is this… five billion?”
“An estimate, yes. Mostly companies and property. I didn’t know how much he had until just before he died.”
She looked up so quickly that the paper slid under her hand.
“You’re serious?”
“Yes.”
“When did you find out?”
“Three weeks before our last argument.”
She leaned back as though the chair had shifted.
“You knew when I said all those things about money.”
“I did.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I asked whether you’d marry me if my financial situation stayed the same. And you couldn’t say yes.”
“Marcus, that wasn’t fair.”
“No,” I said. “Maybe it wasn’t. I should have told you how scared I was about us instead of holding something back. But the way you treated me was still your choice.”
She pressed both hands over her mouth. Her gaze went back to the number.
“If I had known…”
She stopped.
I waited.
Her voice was barely audible. “I would have stayed.”
There it was. No performance. No clever defense. Just the answer I’d already known and had still needed to hear.
“That’s why I didn’t tell you,” I said.
“Do you understand what you did?” she asked. “You let me walk away from all this.”
I felt the sentence land. Not you let me walk away from you. From all this.
“I didn’t let you do anything. You made your choice.”
She stared at me, and for a moment I saw anger replace the shock. Then the anger faded, leaving something like humiliation.
“You must hate me.”
“I did, for a little while.”
“And now?”
“Now I wish you hadn’t done it.”
She reached across the table, stopped halfway, and pulled her hand back.
“Is there truly no way back?”
I thought about Sunday mornings with her. The drive she made when my car broke down. The way she’d loved my father’s terrible jokes. I thought about her kissing another man and coming home to kiss me. Both sets of memories belonged to the same person.
“No,” I said.
She nodded once, though she was crying.
“I am sorry about your dad,” she said. “Whatever you think of me, that part is real.”
“I know.”
I folded the statement, slid it back into my jacket, and stood.
