I looked at Mr. Bennett.
“Who was it?”
He reached into the box and pulled out another envelope.
“This one contains documents Thomas collected over the years.”
I opened it.
Inside were photocopies of letters, bank records and an old photograph.
Then I saw a name.
My father’s name.
I nearly dropped the papers.
“My father?”
Mr. Bennett nodded.
“Thomas spent decades trying to understand what happened.”
I couldn’t breathe.
“My father died thirty years ago.”
“I know.”
“So how could he—?”
“Because Thomas eventually discovered the truth.”
I sat down.
My father had always told me that Thomas wasn’t serious about me.
That he was irresponsible.
That he would eventually leave me.
I had believed him.
Mr. Bennett quietly explained what Thomas had discovered.
“My father contacted Thomas’s father shortly before you left for college,” he said.
“He told him that if Thomas followed you, he would make sure Thomas’s family business lost its largest contract.”
I stared at the papers.
“But why?”
Mr. Bennett placed another document in front of me.
Thomas’s father had written a confession decades later.
He admitted that my father had threatened him because he wanted to separate us.
Apparently, my father believed I was destined for someone else.
Someone from a wealthier family.
Someone he thought could give me a better future.
Thomas had never known the entire truth until many years later.
By then, both families had moved on.
And I had spent my entire life believing Thomas had abandoned me.
PART 4 — THE SECOND BOX
I thought the revelations were over.
They weren’t.
Mr. Bennett reached beneath the first box and pulled out another one.
“This is the part Thomas was most concerned about.”
I stared at him.
“There is more?”
“Yes.”
He opened it.
Inside was a small velvet pouch.
I recognized it immediately.
Thomas had once given me a similar pouch when we were seventeen.
My hands trembled as I opened it.
Inside was a ring.
An engagement ring.
I stared at it in disbelief.
“He kept this?”
“For fifty-six years.”
I covered my mouth.
“He bought it before we separated?”
“Yes.”
Then Mr. Bennett handed me another letter.
I never gave you this ring.
I carried it with me through every stage of my life.
I thought about giving it to someone else.
I couldn’t.
I thought time would make me stop loving you.
It didn’t.
I cried harder than I had at his funeral.
Then I noticed something engraved inside the ring.
Two words.
Still waiting.
PART 5 — THE CONDITION
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