Page 57

“Thank you.”
When the waiter approached, I ordered an orange juice for her and another for myself to go with the starter.
“That lady I saw at your house, your grandmother... Is that right?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Your parents...” In the middle of my sentence, I tried to analyze his reaction for fear of touching on a subject that might be too delicate.
“My mother is somewhere. She keeps disappearing, it's been like this since I can remember. It was my grandmother who brought me up and always looked after me. My father, well... My mother doesn't know who he is.”
“But you never wanted to know?”
“If he never cared about me, I thought it best not to care either. Life was hard enough without suffering from it.”
“I can imagine.”
“You have living parents who moved to the suburbs after he retired and passed the business on to you.”
“Wow! You've done your homework.”
“It's easy to find information about you on the internet.”
“Unfortunately, yes.”
The waiter brought their orders, and she sipped her juice.
“I'm sorry about the accident.”
“Everyone feels it, but it's something no one imagines when they get married. They talk about it untildeath do them part, and you never think it can happen so quickly.
I noticed that she swallowed, and I hurried to change the subject because I didn't want to talk about something that hurt me so much. I'd had enough time to suffer because of my wife, but I'd learned to stand up for my daughters. I had to keep living for them.
“Why teacher?”
“I've always loved children, and I thought that helping them learn and develop was the best thing I could do.”
“But you don't have children?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Since my grandmother became ill, there was less and less time left, and I admit that I wasn't making an effort to date either. Going home from work was much calmer and kept me from having to worry about other problems.
“So it seems I wasn't the only one hiding.”
“I never went around asking how much a guy wanted to...” He gritted his teeth and didn't even finish his sentence.
“I apologize for that.”
She stepped back, softening her expression.
“If it weren't for them, we might never be having this conversation.”
“But we are.”
He nodded and drank some more of the juice.