But she didn’t.
Instead, I saw two adults sitting across from each other, connected by a past neither of us had been allowed to fully understand.
We talked.
We remembered.
We filled in pieces of a story that had been deliberately interrupted decades earlier.
William told me he didn’t expect us to recreate the past.
He didn’t ask me to leave everything behind.
He didn’t ask me to forgive him for things that hadn’t been his fault.
He simply wanted the chance to know Anna.
“If she wants that too,” he said.
I told him the decision belonged entirely to her.
It had to.
After everything that had happened, I wasn’t going to make that choice for her.
Neither was William.
And certainly not Rick.
Soon afterward, I filed for divorce.
It wasn’t an easy decision.
There were years of memories to process.
