Her father put down his tool. — Sometimes bad things happen at the right time. — Yes. They were silent for a moment. Then Marina took the old child’s jacket out of a drawer—the very one, with the torn lining. She placed it on the table. — Why do you keep it? — her father asked.
— To remember. That everything can change in one night. And that sometimes the most valuable thing is hidden where you least expect it. Her father nodded. He took the jacket, ran his hand over the worn fabric. — Back then, I thought—what if she throws it away, doesn’t find it. Every month I sent money and feared it was for nothing. — It wasn’t for nothing. — I see that now.
Marina looked at him—at his gray hair, his tired eyes, the hands that had worked for her for twenty years. And she realized: she was not alone. She had never been alone. Outside, the streetlights came on. The city was getting ready for the evening.
Marina finished her tea, stood up, and started clearing the table. Her father helped. They worked in silence, comfortably, as if they had been together their whole lives. And in that silence, there was more than in all the words she had heard from Vladimir in twenty years.
Marina turned off the light and locked the bakery. Her father was waiting outside. They walked side by side through the evening city—two people who had lost each other and found each other again. Sometimes you have to lose everything to understand what you have.
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