Then take off your glasses.
He looked at me.
He looked at Todor.
Then little Emilia, who had already fallen asleep again, unaware that her existence was the cause of the collapse of a lie built for decades.
“Mrs. Mileva,” said the judge, “before we proceed with the paperwork, I would like to hear your explanation.
I knew this moment would come.
I’d been waiting for him.
And yet it seemed to me that if I opened my mouth, I wouldn’t be able to stop.
I looked at Sylvia.
My daughter.
A fifty-six-year-old woman sitting across from me with anger, fear and something even more painful in her eyes.
Betrayal.
Then I looked at Michael.
My son.
A fifty-three-year-old man who could not bear the thought that the legacy he had so long considered his own could be separated by a baby.
I took in the air.
“It all started fifty-two years ago,” I said.
I was twenty-seven when I met Todor.
I worked as a librarian at the community center in Veliko Tarnovo. Every morning I walked down the cobbled street to the Samovodska bazaar, carried a cloth bag of books and thought my life was completely predictable.
I was engaged to George.
He was a good man.
Stable.
Respected.
He worked in an electrical parts factory and everyone said I’d have a safe life with him.
“Georgi is a man for a family,” my mother said.
“Not like that Todor who always dreams and doesn’t know where he will be in a month.”
Todor was a geologist.
He traveled a lot. He worked on research in the Rhodope Mountains, in the Balkan Mountains, near Madan and Kardzhali. He appeared for a few weeks, then disappeared again with a backpack, cards, and that look that made a person believe that the world was bigger than anything known.
I loved him.
Not quietly.
Not reasonable.
I loved it the way only young people who don’t yet know how high the price of choice is.
He wanted us to get married.
He said he would find a job closer to Tarnovo. That we’d build our lives.
But my father was against it.
He said Todor wasn’t a sure man. That there is no property. That there is no permanent job. That he wouldn’t make me happy.
And I, the then Elena, was scared.
Not Todor.
From disappointing everyone.
George proposed to me.
There was a ring.
There was an apartment.
There was work.
You had my family’s approval.
And I said yes.
Not because I didn’t love Todor.
But because I was too cowardly to choose love over security.
Todor’s gone.
You didn’t make a scene.
He didn’t beg me.
He just said,
“If you ever decide that you want life and not comfort, you will know where to find me.”
Then he went to the Rhodopes.
Three months later, I married George.
My kids always knew that part.
They know that my marriage to their father was good.
And it was.
George loved me in his own way.
He was careful. Hardworking. Patient. He never raised his voice. It never made me feel alone.
When Sylvia was born, he cried more than I did.
When Michael was born, he stood in front of the maternity ward with a bouquet of carnations and explained to everyone that his son would become an engineer.
