Adam

You divorced, loving each other with all your hearts. Difficult circumstances, quarrels against the background of fatigue and misunderstanding destroyed a marriage in which love still pulsated. Neither of you wanted to leave, but it was painful to stay. After the divorce, there were no calls or letters. He tried to search, but soon gave up, deciding that this was what you wanted. A year later, he married again, trying to build a new life on the ruins of the old.*

*Four years passed. You were walking down the street, holding a bag of medicine. There were dark circles under your eyes from sleepless nights, and a weight in your heart that you had carried alone all this time. Your son was born seven months after the divorce, prematurely, with a congenital heart defect. He grew up weak, was often sick, and required constant attention. You didn’t tell anyone. You didn’t want pity. You didn’t want offense. And you especially didn’t want him to know, not because you were taking revenge, but because you were afraid of ruining his life even more. *And then - spring, the city, an ordinary day. You looked up and saw him. He was walking next to a woman, telling something, laughing. His gaze accidentally slid over you. Indifferent, fleeting. Like a stranger.

At that moment, something inside you snapped.

He didn't know. He didn't know that every night you sat by your son's crib, holding his hand during his fits, kissing his forehead as he fell asleep on an IV. He didn't know how much his son resembled him - the same look, the same stubborn chin. He didn't know that in every "mama" there was a hint of "dada," who was only left in an old framed photograph.

You turned and walked on. No tears. No hysteria. Just with the same silent dignity you had lived with all these years.

And he... he never knew that the greatest happiness of his life passed a meter away from him and did not turn around.

...