No. The crash was caused by a driver who entered the opposite direction. But for years I felt guilty.
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I looked at the photo.
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My father died when I was eight. My mother had told me only that it had been a road accident and that I didn’t have to blame myself for anything.
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Did my mother know where she was?
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Yes. And he knew how much I blamed myself.
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Gabriel wiped his eyes.
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After the funeral, I wanted to leave town. Your mother found me behind the house. He told me that your father wouldn’t want me to give up school and that if I left, all his help would be in vain.
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I remembered the apple pie.
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I remembered how much I had cried when my mother had taken her out.
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But why did he give you better food than us?
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Gabriel smiled sadly.
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It wasn’t always like that. Sometimes he took me what was left of you. Other people cooked especially for me because I was sick or hadn’t eaten for two days. But I know it seemed unfair to you.
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It was unfair, I said softly. I was her child.
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I know. And she knew it.
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He took another sheet out of the envelope.
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It was a letter.
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“My dear Alina,
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If you are reading these lines, it means that Gabriel could no longer keep it a secret.
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I didn’t tell you the truth when you were a little girl because you just lost your father. I was afraid that if you found out that he had died while he was trying to help Gabriel, you would hate him even more.
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I thought that with the passage of time, I would find a good time to explain.
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But the years passed, you left, and I kept putting off.
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I was wrong.
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Not because I helped Gabriel, but because I didn’t explain why and because I let you believe that you were less important to me.
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It was never like that.
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I loved you every day, including in the years we didn’t talk to each other.
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Mother.”
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I’ve read the letter twice.
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Then I asked:
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Why weren’t you at the hospital?
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Gabriel lowered his gaze.
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I was it. The night before you arrived. Doctors told me her condition had worsened. I stayed until the morning, then I went to get some documents and clothes. When I came back, he was already dead.
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I started to cry.
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All those years when I considered him a stranger who had stolen my mother, he had been the man who had done his shopping, took her to the doctor and repaired her house.
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Why did you never tell me that you were helping her?
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I didn’t want to make you feel guilty. Your mother always hoped that one day you would get back together.
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I stayed on the steps for a long time.
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Then Gabriel asked me if I wanted to go in.
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The house smelled the same as in childhood. In the kitchen, on the wall, he was still hanging the watch that my father had repaired shortly before he died.
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Gabriel opened a wardrobe and pulled out a metal box.
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Inside were photographs, congratulations and letters that I had sent to my mother over the years.
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He kept them all.
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Even that short Christmas card, in which I had written only “Happy Holidays”.
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“He was always talking about you,” Gabriel told me. She was proud to finish college, that you had a good job and that you could handle it yourself.
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I took the box in my arms.
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In the coming weeks, Gabriel and I started to meet. She told me about her last years, her garden and how she kept preparing apple pie every autumn.
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He showed me his workshop.
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On a wall, in a simple frame, was my father’s photo.
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It said, “The man who gave me my first chance.”
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I didn’t become my best friends overnight.
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I had too many years of silence between us.
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But one Sunday I invited him for lunch.
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I made apple pie after my mom’s recipe. It didn’t work out perfectly. The dough was a little too thick, and the apples had left too much juice.
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Gabriel ate two slices.
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“It tastes almost the same,” he said.
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I smiled.
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“My mother put more cinnamon.
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Yes. And he always said that next time he would put less.
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We both laughed.
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That afternoon I understood that my mother had not loved me any less because she had taken care of Gabriel.
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But I also understood something that she herself had admitted in the letter: a child cannot guess the reasons why a parent seems unfair to him.
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I wish I had spoken to her earlier.
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To have asked her, to have listened to her and told her how hard it all had.
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I could no longer change the lost years.
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But I could not repeat the same mistake.
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When Gabriel got up to leave, I put the last two slices of pie in a casserole.
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Get them home, I told him.
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He looked at me and smiled.
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Are you sure?
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Yes. We’ve done enough for both of us.
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For the first time in my twenties, I didn’t feel like I was giving him anything that was due to me.
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We finally shared a memory that my mother had tried, in her imperfect way, to leave to us both.
