I felt my legs begin to tremble.

— What are you talking about?!

Artyom looked like he was on the verge of collapsing.

— Twenty years ago… before I met you… there was another woman in my life. She became pregnant. But I got scared. I ran away. I left her alone.

I stared at him in shock, unable to believe what I was hearing.

— What are you saying?…

— A few months later, she died in a car accident… and the child was taken in by relatives. I never saw them again.

The wind whipped through the trees around us as the rain poured down.

— What does this have to do with our daughter?! — I shouted.

He answered in a whisper:

— Because Lily is the exact image of that child…

I felt as though the world was spinning.

— What exactly are you trying to say?…

He ran his fingers through his soaked hair, completely broken.

— After the birth… when I saw her face… I thought I was losing my mind. The same eyes. The same expression. Even that tiny crease between her eyebrows…

He struggled to breathe.

— So I started searching. Investigating. Trying to find that family.

I no longer knew what was real.

— You suspected me?…

He closed his eyes.

— I didn’t want to… but I simply couldn’t understand what was happening. None of it made sense.

A sharp pain cut through me.

— While I was recovering from childbirth… while I thought I was dying… you were doubting me?

— No! That’s not what this is! — he shouted. — I was terrified! I thought the past had come back to destroy me!

I slowly stepped backward in the rain.

I no longer recognized the man I had loved for ten years.

— So every single night… you came here?

He nodded.

— Yes…

— And what did you find out?

His face collapsed with emotion.

Then he spoke the words that froze my blood.

— That girl… really was my daughter.

The silence became unbearable.

— What?…

— She lives here.

At that moment, the old door behind him slowly opened.

A young woman appeared in the doorway.

She looked to be in her twenties.

And when the light illuminated her face…

I screamed.

Because she looked terrifyingly similar to our baby.

The same eyes.

The same mouth.

The same tiny crease between the eyebrows.

It felt as if I were looking at Lily twenty years later.

The young woman watched us silently, hugging herself against the cold.

Then she looked at Artyom with eyes filled with pain.

— So… is this her? she asked quietly.

Artyom didn’t answer.

He seemed crushed beneath the weight of his shame.

I felt my heart pounding in my throat.

— Who is she? I whispered.

The young woman stepped closer.

— My name is Sofia.

Her voice trembled.

— I’m his daughter.

The world stopped around me.

I looked at Artyom, unable to speak.

He was crying silently.

— All my life, I believed my father abandoned us because he didn’t want us, — Sofia continued. — After my mother died, my grandmother raised me alone. Then she died too. I had no one left.

She looked at Artyom with endless sadness.

— And now he comes here every night… because he’s trying to repair twenty lost years.

I felt anger rising inside me.

— Repair?! — I repeated. — By destroying our family?!

Artyom stepped toward me.

— I never wanted to hurt you…

— But you did!

My voice cracked.

— You left me alone after the birth of our child! You looked at me as if I had betrayed your trust!

— I know… — he whispered.

I could see in his eyes that he regretted everything.

But some wounds come too late to heal.

Sofia lowered her gaze.

— I never wanted to destroy your life, — she said softly. — I only wanted to understand why my father disappeared.

The wind howled around us.

And suddenly, I realized something terrible.

We were all victims of the same past.

A mistake made twenty years earlier had exploded in the middle of our lives.

Artyom dropped to his knees in the mud.

— Forgive me… please… I’m begging you…

But in that freezing rain, in that moment, I no longer knew whether my heart would ever be able to forgive him.