The touch was brief, almost accidental—yet it changed the weight of the silence between them.
He had come only to deliver the documents, the ones no one else seemed willing to carry to her remote cottage at the edge of the forest. It was supposed to be a short visit, no more than a polite exchange at the doorway.
But she had insisted he step inside.
And when he did, the air had felt different—dense with something unsaid, as if every inch of the small parlor remembered too much.
The old woman moved slowly, gracefully, her hands always busy—pouring tea, arranging old letters, folding a piece of lace that looked centuries old. She spoke little. Yet every time she glanced at him, her eyes seemed to search for a face that wasn’t his.
When she reached across the table to hand him the cup, her fingers brushed his sleeve. It was so light a touch that he might have ignored it—if not for the way she paused right after. Her hand lingered in the air, uncertain, like a memory trying to surface.
“I thought I’d forgotten that fabric,” she said quietly, looking at his coat. “It’s the same pattern as his. My son’s.”
He froze. “Your son?”
She nodded, her gaze fixed somewhere beyond him. “He never came back from the war. But when I saw you at the gate, I thought for a moment…”
Her voice trailed off. The wind pressed against the windowpanes, and the candle on the table flickered.
He wanted to say something—something to fill the hollow ache that had crept into her tone—but before he could, she rose and crossed to a cabinet in the corner. From within it, she drew a small, dust-covered box.
“Then this must be yours,” she said, setting it before him.
He frowned. “Mine?”
She smiled faintly. “It belonged to him. But he once said he would pass it to someone who reminded him of the life he wanted to live.”
The latch was cold beneath his fingers. Inside was a worn photograph—a boy standing beside a younger version of the woman, both squinting into sunlight. Beneath it, a folded letter sealed with faded wax.
The old woman’s hand trembled. “He told me to wait,” she whispered. “Said one day, I’d know who to give it to.”
Outside, thunder rolled across the hills. Inside, neither of them spoke. The candlelight swayed, throwing their shadows against the wall—two shapes that seemed, for a heartbeat, to overlap.