He gave a quiet laugh.
“I’ve never been good at keeping secrets.”
Then I remembered something.
I looked at him.
“And why did you ask me if I was a virgin?”
His face immediately turned red.
For a moment, he looked completely embarrassed.
“I was trying to ask whether you were serious with someone, whether you were building your life around another person, whether you were making your own decisions.”
I stared at him.
“And somehow that became, ‘Are you a virgin?’”
Richard covered his face with one hand.
“I know. It may have been the worst question I’ve ever asked in my life.”
For the first time that day, I laughed.
That night, we stayed in Room 214 until almost midnight, opening my father’s letters one by one.
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Three months later, I opened my little photography studio.
On opening day, the first photograph I put on the wall wasn’t one of my own.
It was an old picture of my father and Richard when they were young.
Underneath it, I wrote just one sentence:
“Sometimes the door you are most afraid to open does not hide your greatest fear… but the love of someone who spent years waiting for you to finally find it.”I was already twenty-seven years old, yet that evening was the first time I truly felt afraid of my uncle.
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His name was Richard. He was my father’s older brother, and ever since I was a child, he had been one of the people everyone in our family trusted.
When I was little, he brought me birthday presents, came to my school performances, and always told me:
“If you ever need anything, just call me.”
After my father died, those words became even more important to me.
But over the past year, Richard had changed.
He started asking strange questions.
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“Did you keep anything from your mother’s old belongings?”
Or:
“Have you ever wondered why your father never liked talking about his younger years?”
Usually, I just laughed and changed the subject.
But then, one day, he suddenly asked me something that made me freeze.
“Emily, are you a virgin?”
For a few seconds, I honestly thought I had misheard him.
“What?”
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Richard looked away.
“I’m asking whether you’ve ever had a serious relationship.”
I stared at him.
“What does that have to do with you?”
