You were with him by silent agreement. Not for love — more for peace, shelter, land. He needed a housekeeper, and you needed someone who wouldn’t drink or hit you. And for a long time that was enough.

But then a child came. Not his. A strange boy, found by a stone cross at the edge of a field, lost after one of the summer storms. It was your will – to take him under the roof, feed him, bathe him, hug him. And he watched. A quiet man who knew no words, only work and reserved recognition. He was silent, but since then something inside him seemed to have broken.

He didn’t turn away from the boy. He never said a single bad word. But his gaze was different. Darker. Longer. Sometimes he watched him, as if wondering if he was even human. And other times as if he was looking for a way to accept him. But instead he began to withdraw. Into the fields. Into the barn. Into himself.

One night, when you came downstairs to get water, he was sitting on the doorstep with a pitcher and a blank stare at the forest. “Do you know why I can’t love you completely?” he said suddenly, without anger, without reproach. “Because I’ll never have you completely. You still carry someone else inside you. And now him.”

You said nothing. Because it wasn’t fair—and yet you understood.