- Are you sorry?
↓
He agreed, looking into the floor.
↓
“I tried to get a loan for the rest of the money, but the bank rejected my request. They told me that my income is too low and that I don’t have enough guarantees.
↓
Then he lifted the key off the table.
↓
I sold my car.
↓
I felt a void in my stomach.
↓
It was her old Volkswagen Polo, which she had been driving since college began. It broke down often, but Sofia loved him. He had bought it from the money raised during high school and told me about how proud he had been on the day he received the keys.
↓
“But you need a car to get to work.
↓
I can take the bus.
↓
And in college?
↓ - I’ll manage.
↓
I looked at her helplessly.
↓
Sofia, I don’t understand. Where did you get the rest of the money?
↓
That’s when he handed me the picture.
↓
↓
In the picture appeared a small house with a red roof and a garden full of flowers. In front of the gate was an elderly woman with white hair, holding a little girl of about seven years.
↓
I immediately recognized Sofia.
↓
“It’s my grandmother,” she said. The house in the photo was the only thing he left me when he died.
↓
I knew her grandmother’s story. Sofia had grown up mostly with that woman because her parents had died in a car accident when she was very young. Her grandmother had raised her from her modest pension and had done everything possible for the granddaughter not to feel the shortcomings.
↓
After his grandmother’s death, Sofia inherited an old house in a village near Brasov.
↓
It wasn’t worth a fortune.
↓
But for her it meant everything.
↓
“You told me you would never sell that house, I murmured.
↓
Sofia agreed.
↓
That’s what I thought.
↓
I looked at the documents on the table.
↓
A pre-contract of sale.
↓
A proof of payment of an advance.
↓
Her signature.
↓
For a few seconds, the letters started to get swollen.
↓
Did you sell your grandmother’s house?
↓
I found a buyer who urgently needed a property in the area. It offered me a big advance and I accepted a lower price than I was hoping, provided we finalized the transaction quickly.
↓
He looked at the photo.
↓
“My grandmother always said that a house can be rebuilt, but a man cannot be brought back after you have lost him.
↓
I felt my chest tightening.
↓
I invented a disease.
↓
And she had given up on the only sentimental legacy she had to save me.
↓
