Marina hesitated. Anger and confusion battled inside her, but something in Nadine’s fractured tone compelled her to return.
When she arrived, the apartment door was wide open. Inside, Nadine sat on the floor amid scattered documents and an old wooden box, her face streaked with tears.
“I found this while going through Elias’s belongings,” she said, handing Marina a handwritten letter.
Marina’s hands trembled as she read. In the letter, Elias explained that he had quietly set aside a separate bank account in Marina’s name and transferred ownership of a small seaside cottage to her.
He had intended it as a surprise for their next anniversary—a way to ensure she would always be secure. “He wanted to protect you,” Nadine whispered through tears. “I didn’t know.
I truly believed he had left you with nothing. I was wrong.”
Relief and sorrow washed over Marina at once.
The cottage was modest, the money limited—but it was proof of Elias’s love and foresight.
She looked at Nadine, no longer seeing an adversary, but another woman grieving the same man from a different place in his life.
Marina inhaled slowly. “Let’s handle this the right way,” she said softly. “Not as enemies—but as people bound by his memory.”
In that quiet moment, grief softened into understanding. What began with loss did not end in bitterness, but in compassion—and the fragile, unexpected beginning of healing for them both.
