The letters weren’t pleas anymore. Not really.
They were fragments. Memories of the days before everything shattered.
Regrets written without justification. Apologies offered without demands. Promises to wait. To stay. To accept whatever scraps of presence I allowed him.
I read them in secret, always alone, then folded them carefully and tucked them into the drawer beside my bed.
The stack grew thicker with each passing day, heavy with words I wasn’t ready to forgive but couldn’t bring myself to discard.
They felt like silent accusations—not of what he’d done, but of the fact that some part of me still cared enough to read them at all.
Forgiveness wasn’t a switch. It wasn’t something I could turn on just because he’d found the truth too late or because remorse now came so easily to him.
The scars he’d left behind—emotional, physical, invisible—ran too deep, etched into places even time struggled to reach.
More than once, my finger had hovered over my phone.
I could call Ruslan. I could say the words.He’s bothering me. He won’t leave me alone.
It would be enough. Dmitri would be gone within hours. The limbo would end. The ache would have a clean edge again.
But I never made the call.
Not when Vanya needed his father—even if he didn’t fully understand that need yet.
Not when some traitorous, stubborn part of my heart still cared whether Dmitri lived or died with that guilt gnawing him hollow from the inside.
Today, the sun hung low and golden over the estate, spilling warmth across the sprawling gardens.
The air was heavy with blooming jasmine and the faint salt of the nearby sea, a scent that felt like Greece itself—ancient, patient, watching.
Vanya and I wandered along the winding paths, olive trees stretching their twisted branches overhead, bougainvillea bursting with color on either side.
He’d warmed to me slowly over the weeks.
A hand slipping into mine without thinking. A shy smile when he thought I wasn’t looking. Letting me tuck him in at night instead of the nanny. Small victories. Fragile ones.
But the question still lingered between us, unspoken and heavy: Was I really his mother?
Some days he called me “Penelope,” careful and polite. Other times—usually half-asleep—“Mama” slipped from his lips, soft and unconscious, only to be withdrawn the next morning like it had never happened.
Each time it happened, hope flared painfully in my chest... only to dim again.
It frustrated me more than I liked to admit.
I was beginning to accept the truth I’d been avoiding: convincing him might take more than patience and love. It might require both of us. Dmitri and me. Standing together. United. Offering him certainty instead of fragments.
And that realization terrified me more than any apology ever could.
We paused near a stone fountain, its tiers worn smooth by centuries of water and time.
Moss clung to the edges like stubborn memory, and the sound of trickling water softened the air, steady and soothing.
Vanya slipped from my side and crouched low, utterly absorbed as a ladybug crawled along the edge of a broad green leaf, its red shell gleaming like a tiny jewel in the sun.
That was when I felt it.
The sensation crept up my spine—slow, deliberate. Eyes on us.