The silence in the room was so profound that I could hear my own breathing.

Manuel kept staring at my back.

His eyes were fixed on a small mark that I had learned to ignore throughout my life.

A scar.

Slim.

Irregular.

That crossed part of my side.

I instinctively covered myself with my hands.

“It’s nothing,” I murmured.

But Manuel slowly shook his head.

—Yes, it is something.

Her voice was filled with restrained emotion.

She sat down slowly on the bed in front of me.

“That scar…” she said gently, “I know it.”

I looked at him, confused.

—How could you meet her?

Manuel took a deep breath.

—Because that scar appeared the same day you stopped answering my letters.

I felt my chest tighten.

For forty years she had kept that memory like a painful secret.

“I didn’t want you to know,” I whispered.

Manuel looked at me tenderly.

—But I need to understand.

I looked down.

—After you went north… I kept waiting for your letters.

At first they arrived every week.

Then every month.

Until one day they stopped coming.

I thought you had forgotten our promise.

Tears began to run down my face.

—One day I received a different letter.

Manuel frowned.

—Which letter?

—A letter signed with your name… saying that you had met another woman.

Manuel’s face paled.

-That?

—I said you wouldn’t be coming back.

That you wanted me to get on with my life.

Silence filled the room.

Manuel denied it vehemently.

—I never wrote that.

I felt the world moving beneath my feet.

—But the letter had your signature.

“Someone forged it,” he said.

My mind started to spin.

—Who would do something like that?

Manuel looked towards the window.

—My father.

—Your father?

—He never wanted me to marry you.

I remembered something I had always ignored.

His father was a proud man… obsessed with money.

—When I went north —Manuel continued— I asked him to send my letters while I was working.

She closed her eyes in pain.

—Now I understand why your replies stopped coming.

We remained silent for several seconds.

An entire life had changed because of a lie.

—And the scar? —Manuel finally asked.

I took a deep breath.

—The day I received that letter… I was so desperate that I ran towards the river in the village.

My voice was trembling.

—I didn’t want to go on living.

Manuel remained completely still.

—I tried to jump… but I slipped on the stones.

I remembered the pain.

Cold water.

Fear.

—A rock cut my side deeply.

The doctors said I was lucky to survive.

Manuel covered his face with his hands.

-My God…

—After that —I continued— my family decided that I should marry another man.

—And you never knew the truth.

I shook my head slowly.

-Until now.

Manuel looked up.

Her eyes were filled with tears.

—They stole forty years from us.

The weight of those words filled the room.

Forty years.

A whole life.

But then Manuel took my hand.

—But we still have today.

I looked at him.

—Doesn’t my past bother you?

Manuel smiled gently.

—Your past is the reason why you are the woman I love.

He bent down and kissed the scar on my side.

—This is not a mark of pain.

Whisper:

—It’s proof that you survived.

Tears streamed down my face.

—So what will we do now?

Manuel laughed softly.

—The same thing we wanted to do when we were twenty.

-What thing?

He looked at me with those same warm eyes from our youth.

-Live.

We couldn’t recover the lost years.

But that night I understood something important.

True love doesn’t disappear.

Sometimes you just have to wait patiently…

until two hearts finally find their way back.