Just give me one gift… the next morning he woke up alone…
«You’re more than a mother-in-law to us,» he declared, and his voice quivered with sentiment. «You’re the essence of our household, the individual who elevates us all. Gratitude for all.»
The attendees clapped, and his mother-in-law, typically composed, couldn’t conceal her emotions. Her gaze, brimming with thankfulness and affection, gleamed under the fixture’s illumination.
She rose to embrace Ethan and, drawing him near, murmured softly in his ear.
«Sophia. Your joy, son. Don’t forfeit her.
A spouse like that arrives once per existence.» Her statements, uttered with such earnestness, impacted Ethan like a bolt. He stiffened, uncertain of a reply.
He merely assented, sensing an internal shift, as if a mechanism had activated in a long-neglected latch.
It transcended a transient sensation. It was the instant when he abruptly comprehended distinctly that Sophia, with her subdued resilience, with her capacity to generate solace even on bleakest occasions, was what sustained his existence in equilibrium.
He recollected how that dawn, despite her depletion, she smoothed the table covering, how she beamed at the arrivals, how she discreetly guaranteed everyone’s ease.
And in that juncture, the portrayal of the other female, lately deemed vital, commenced dissipating like an illusion.
Ethan glanced at Sophia, who lingered slightly apart, refining the blooms in the holder.
She appeared fatigued yet stunning, with that allure that doesn’t seize attention instantly but unveils progressively across years. Her gestures were fluid, nearly ethereal, and in them, one perceived the attentiveness she bestowed on all.
He abruptly grasped that he hadn’t acknowledged this previously, or maybe declined to acknowledge.
His mother-in-law’s phrases reverberated in his mind, and each time he beheld his spouse, heat expanded in his chest, intermingled with remorse.
He reflected on how in recent weeks Sophia had crafted his preferred entrees, how she wordlessly welcomed his arrangements, how she observed him with that peculiar reflectiveness, as if bidding adieu. And that notion pierced him deeper than anticipated.
The event persisted, but Ethan was no longer wholly engaged. He observed Sophia, how she chortled at a veteran acquaintance’s quip, how she served tea to her mother, how she embraced her niece arrived from a distant locale.
All of it was so acquainted, so cherished, that he suddenly sensed dread…
