A few days later, Richard found a reason to contact me again. We started talking. At first briefly, then more and more often.
Three months later, Richard proposed.
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My friends thought I had lost my mind.
There were forty-one years between us, and I understood perfectly how it looked from the outside.
His children were even more hostile.
During a family dinner, his daughter Rebecca pulled me aside.
— You really think you’re going to get this house? — she whispered. — You’re getting nothing.
I said nothing.
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Richard heard her.
He simply looked calmly at his daughter and said:
— She will get exactly what she deserves.
I pretended his words didn’t hurt me.
For a while, I tried to convince myself that I didn’t care what other people thought.
Because the truth was, I liked the feeling of security.
I liked waking up in the morning without worrying about whether the electricity bill had been paid.
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I liked being able to buy groceries without checking my bank balance first.
I liked the warm home, the quiet mornings, and the feeling that, for the first time in my life, I wasn’t just one difficult week away from losing everything.
But Richard was good to me.
Much better than I expected.
He remembered what kind of coffee I liked. He noticed when I was tired. Whenever I came home late, he always asked how my day had gone.
He listened to me even when what I was talking about didn’t really matter.
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One day, I spent several minutes telling him about a little shop near my old home and the shopkeeper who always saved my favorite bread for me.
I finished the story and laughed.
— I don’t even know why I’m telling you this.
Richard shrugged.
— Because it matters to you. So it matters to me too.
I didn’t answer him then.
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But moments like that gradually changed my feelings for him.
Somewhere along the way, almost with shame and a certain awkwardness, I stopped pretending that I didn’t care.
I truly fell in love with him.
And the more time passed, the less I cared about what other people thought.
I no longer saw Richard as a wealthy older man who could solve my financial problems.
I saw a man who asked me in the morning whether I had slept well, who noticed my mood, and who never made me feel small or indebted when I was with him.
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And then Richard got sick.
Everything happened frighteningly fast.
At first, we thought he simply needed more rest.
Then came the tests, the doctors, and the long conversations that neither of us wanted to end with words about the future.
Six weeks after the diagnosis, I was already standing at his funeral.
His children looked at me as if I were personally responsible for their father’s death.
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Rebecca barely looked at me.
