Todor came from Ruse every week.
Sometimes he stayed for several days.
He wasn’t a young father.
His back hurt. He tired easily. Sometimes he fell asleep in the armchair while Emilia lay on his chest.
But he looked at her as if the world were beginning again.
One day, I found him talking quietly to her.
“I was very late, little one,” he said. “But this time, I’m not going anywhere.”
I stood in the doorway and cried silently.
Because his words weren’t only for Emilia.
They were for me too.
For the girl who had once chosen security over love.
For the woman who had spent forty-six years alone because she thought she had no right to a second chance.
Silvia didn’t visit at first.
Neither did Mikhail.
But one day, when Emilia was seven months old, someone knocked on the door.
I opened it.
