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She looked at the bouquet as if it were a bad joke.
“Did you come to buy my forgiveness?” he asked.
“How did you used to buy everything else?”
At that moment, an old man came up the dirt path carrying a bucket of water.
He nodded towards Emily.
“Is everything alright, Miss Emily?”
“Everything’s fine, Mr. Harris,” she replied gently. “Just an old visitor.”
When the neighbor left, she sighed and stepped aside.
“Come in,” he said. “Before the whole town starts gossiping.”
The interior of the house hit Daniel like a second impact.
A single small room served as both kitchen and living room. An old fan sluggishly rotated near the ceiling. The furniture was mismatched and worn.
But everything was clean.
Tidy.
Worthy.
“Sit down,” Emily said, pointing to a plastic chair.
Daniel sat stiffly, looking around in disbelief.
“How did you end up like this?” she asked in a low voice.
Emily looked him straight in the eyes.
“Do you really want to know?” he asked.
“Or do you just want to feel less guilty?”
He opened his mouth to reply, but she continued.
“After you kicked me out, I tried to start over. I sold my jewelry. I rented a tiny apartment. I looked for a job.”
He paused.
“Do you know what I found?”
“Closed doors.”
Daniel frowned.
“I never…”
“Yes, you did,” she interrupted calmly.
“You told people I was unstable. That I wanted to steal company secrets. That I was dangerous.”
Daniel’s chest tightened.
“You didn’t just kick me out of your house,” she said. “You erased my name from everywhere.”
The room was filled with a heavy silence.
“When the money ran out, I was evicted,” she continued in a low voice. “I spent months in a women’s shelter.”
Daniel’s hands clenched tightly.
“I didn’t know.”
“You didn’t want to know.”
She looked out the window.
“Eventually I found work cleaning rooms in a hospital. Then an old house appeared that my grandmother left me. It was falling to pieces… but it was the only thing you couldn’t take from me.”
Daniel lowered his head.
The flowers in her hands suddenly felt like stones.