Runaway Bride

“Are you sure?”

I almost want to smash my face against the wall, hit it again and again until my neurons start working again. I stare at Darío. I can’t believe that he is actually blind, that after trying to regain what he lost with the death of his late wife, he is now left in that state for the rest of his life.

My heart and mind cannot believe it.

I cannot give it up so easily.

He cannot give up. I have seen and heard so many miracles. For example, being cured of cancer, a fatal disease. Or diseases like HIV have twenty or thirty years of a healthy life without setbacks through care. Losing your vision is not the same. I know it is not, but it is impossible for me not to consider every option that manifests in my head.

“I think you know the answer to that question very well.” He focuses his eyes on me, but I know he can’t see me. I understand.

I have been unable to move or peel myself away from the hard wood of the bedroom door. His arrival has made my heart beat fast, and memories that have haunted me since the night we spent together have returned.

“I’m sorry, really. I’m sorry, I don’t mean to offend you...”

“You don’t,” he interrupts me, “and you never will. I know you don’t want to offend me, and this situation, I assure you, Tatiana, is something I could never have considered as the beginning of our marriage.”

“Our marriage has never been like ordinary ones,” I gasp without measuring my words.

“Don’t say that. I tried every way to give you a wedding, a ceremony, and a lunch with your family. I tried to make you feel at home when you came here to the castle. I made you...”

“I know everything you did.” I approach him, unsure, and place my hands on his shoulders. He tenses instantly but gradually relaxes. When I see that my hands are no longer a bother or an agony, I give myself the chance to continue. “I know what you did from the first moment, and I understand. I’ll be completely honest with you: I don’t understand why even at this point you’re still saying that you and I...” I stop abruptly.

has prevented us from carrying out this alliance in a satisfactory way for both of us, even when inside me, my heart beats so fast to have him close and when my hands tingle with desire to caress his skin like that night at the lake. Had I known that our relationship could be so simple without marriage, I would have stayed that way, as the woman at the lake,

minimized to infinity. “You didn’t have the confidence, just like when you saw me with my sister’s letter before you left. You said the

even more to

keeps me from breathing. “You say you don’t want to get over your... Arianna.” Donatella mentioned the deceased’s name to me days ago. “I understand. I don’t want to take

he has the courtesy to lower his

sadly. “You should have told me at the exact moment you decided to do the

I’ve known you for a few days. I couldn’t... I couldn’t tell you that I was

the tears escape. It’s a horrible feeling, and it’s a half-truth what he blurted out because in my gut, I do trust him, and I do believe he’s a good man. It’s just that life has mistreated him in an irrational and implausible

have, and

man in front of me, staring blankly, still looking straight at me, shoulders slumped, and mind

I

something for me. That gives me sad and false hopes in a

his child. He told me so himself: he’s still not over her, and he’s not interested in getting her out of his heart either. I don’t know how I can live with that.

make sense that you don’t trust me as a wife, as a person, and not enough to tell me that you have a high probability of dying in surgery, but that you trust me with the care of your son

you wouldn’t be alone. I left you with Donatella. She knows Dante perhaps more than I do. She is a woman. She’s the one who took care of us

you? Did

him until he understands what I mean until he understands how false and empty his words sound. His logic is

that I

not what I wanted to be when I was someone’s wife. It’s not what I