SHARDS OF SPRING

Every year, as winter drew to a close, Moira avoided looking at the calendar, as if that simple act could stop time. Spring was about to arrive—it was visible, tangible—whether by the jasmine blooming on the fence or by the sharper chirping of the birds.

The numbers on the paper hanging on the wall seemed harmless, but for her, they were a weight that settled on her chest, a familiar stone lodged between her ribs that she couldn’t get rid of...

Twenty years. Twenty springs, the same burden.

That night, she looked at herself in the mirror, fogged by the smoke of the incense burner in the room. The reflection showed a thirty-five-year-old woman, still beautiful; her almond-shaped eyes held a permanent tattoo of sadness, weary from having seen and cried too much. Her brown hair fell loosely over her shoulders, and for a fleeting moment, she could see the girl she once was—the one who dreamed of a new dress and her fifteenth birthday...

Spring of 1989

The farm wasn’t immense, but to Moira, it felt like the entire world. At fourteen, she still carried the lightness of someone who trusted the land to hold her.

She knew every trail, every tree, every stone in the stream that wound through the property.

‘Mum, you didn’t forget, did you?’ she asked that morning.

‘Forget what?’

‘The dress...’

Aureliana smiled. ‘Of course, I didn’t forget. Your father has already put aside the money...’

Moira hugged her mum tightly as she left for work at the main house, enveloped in the sweet scent of the cheap deodorant she always wore.

In two weeks, she’d turn fifteen, and she already imagined the small celebration: a few school friends, food and drinks, and maybe even a small cake.

An extravagance by family standards, it’s true, but you only turn fifteen once.

Being their only child, her parents had scrimped on everything else just to offer her small luxuries. They were simple people, quietly generous in their own way.

The’d worked on the farm for many years, since before she was born. Aureliana had her late, almost at forty, when she no longer expected to. Her father took care of the animals and the crops, with the help of an occasional seasonal employee.

Aureliana divided her time between helping him and looking after the main house, cooking, cleaning, and serving, especially when the bosses came to spend holidays or, like that morning, for an extended weekend. Moira was responsible for the household chores.

The heat of that spring afternoon was suffocating. Moira finished hanging out the washing on the clothesline in the back garden next to the vegetable patch, and decided she deserved a dip in the river.

There was nothing wrong with that—she’d always done it, ever since she was little.

The stream was her refuge, the place where she felt most free.

She walked along the familiar path, reaching the river that ran through the farm, and took off her dress. She looked around; there was no one about. There hardly ever was. She removed her underwear and, naked, stepped into the water.

It was cool, inviting.

She entered slowly, feeling the relief on her legs, her stomach, her sun-kissed shoulders. She closed her eyes and let herself float, imagining herself wearing the new dress, what it would be like to be looked at as a young woman, no longer as a girl.

She didn’t hear the footsteps on the bank. She didn’t realise she wasn’t alone.

When Moira tried to recall that day, the images came back fragmented, like shards of glass cutting from within.

His face, young and handsome, but with eyes she couldn’t quite decipher. His soft voice, sounding almost friendly, when he said:

‘You’ve grown up, Moira.’

She turned in the water, covering her body with her arms, ashamed of her own nakedness. She’d known Carlos forever—the bosses’ youngest son.

‘Mr Carlos... I was just...’ she began to say, but he cut her off.

‘Mr Carlos, no. I’m not old... Carlos...’

To her surprise, he took off his shirt and shorts—leaving only his underwear, and stepped into the water.

He was nineteen, but his body was already well-developed: broad shoulders, strong legs and arms, toned from sports.

She moved back a little...

‘You don’t need to be shy with me.’ He approached her. ‘You’re so beautiful...’

There was something unsettling in his tone that made her shiver, yet the water wasn’t too cold.

She started to swim towards the opposite bank, but he was quicker, and when he reached her, his green eyes had changed completely. They seemed to blaze.

‘You’re not going to run away from me, are you? I know you fancy me... Come here, I’ll give you something you’ll like...’ He held her with a strong grip, veins bulging.

He pulled her onto the shingle, which, because the waters were low at that time of year, formed a kind of islet in the middle of the river.

The rest came in visceral flashes that would jolt her awake, gasping, twenty years later— the feel of his hands, damp and slippery, gripping her wrists tightly.

The smell of his sweat, mixed with cologne and the river water—an odour she’d never be able to forget, which came back in waves when she least expected it.

The rough texture of his nascent beard against her neck, scraping her delicate skin as she tried to struggle. Her body thrown onto the stones, his body weighing down on hers.

She remembered the metallic taste of panic in her mouth, the desperation when she realised she couldn’t break free. Her mouth opened but no sound escaped.

Then something hard like a spear penetrating her insides, the lacerating pain spreading from her belly to her throat like a searing burn.

It lasted a few minutes, two, three, but to her, it felt like an eternity.

Then, her body lay sprawled like a broken doll as he swam back to the bank, put on his clothes, and ran a hand through his fair hair as if nothing had happened.

She couldn’t move, only watched the clouds in the sky while feeling something warm trickle between her legs—she realised it was blood.

‘I didn’t think you were a virgin,’ he said, appearing surprised for a second, before adding in a threatening tone. If you tell anyone, your parents will lose their jobs. You know that, don’t you? If they find out, I’ll say I was cooling off in the river, and you came to provoke me. I couldn’t resist, after all, I’m a man...’

She tried to reply, something like, you’re not a man, but a monster, but she only managed a hoarse sound, like a wounded animal. She lay there, lost in time, feeling only the current passing beneath her, the sound against the stones, as she cried...

That night, Moira couldn’t eat. She pushed the food around her plate, from one side to the other, while her father talked about the harvest and her mum commented on the chores at the big house.

Her parents’ voices reached her like a distant echo, words that made no sense, sounds she couldn’t decipher.

‘Aren’t you going to eat?’ Aureliana asked, and Moira just shook her head.

‘I’m not hungry...’

‘Are you alright? You’re always famished...’

‘Must be the heat,’ she replied, getting up from the table.

She went to bed early, but sleep wouldn’t come. Her body burned as if on fire inside, and she felt a thirst she couldn’t quench.

She drank water, but her throat remained dry.

She tried to find a comfortable position in bed, but every movement awoke pains she couldn’t explain.

During the early hours of the morning, a fever set in. Moira trembled beneath the thin sheet, even with the suffocating heat seeping through the window gaps.

She had nightmares where elements mingled—dark water, hands pulling her down, Carlos’s face, a voice repeating her name. She awoke with a start, her pyjamas drenched, her heart beating erratically.

At dawn, when the first sunbeams entered the room, Aureliana came to call her.

‘Moira, get up. You’ll be late for school.’

She remained still, eyes closed, pretending not to hear. Aureliana insisted, shaking her by the shoulders.

‘What’s wrong with you, girl?’

It was then she saw her daughter’s eyes—too bright, glassy, frightening. Aureliana placed a hand on Moira’s forehead and recoiled, alarmed.

‘You’re burning up!’ she exclaimed. ‘You went to the river yesterday, didn’t you?’

Moira confirmed with an almost imperceptible nod.

‘You must have spent ages in the sun. You’ve got sunstroke,’ Aureliana diagnosed, more to herself than to her daughter. ‘You need cold compresses on your forehead and lots of water, but I have to work. I can’t stay here looking after you. You do give me a fright sometimes...’

Aureliana’s voice sounded distant, laden with worry and impatience.

She brought a basin of cool water, clean cloths.

‘I’ll stay here for a bit with you to see if you get better. Then I have to go to work. I hope you get better soon. The worst thing is you’ll miss a day of school. You ought to have more sense, Moira. It hardly seems like you’re turning fifteen...’

That was it. Aureliana’s last words stung like barbs in her head. A sharp pain in her chest, and she couldn’t hold back the tears.

‘Are you crying? You should think before being so senseless...’

At that moment, she wanted to let out that it wasn’t her fault.

That it hadn’t been the sun that had left her like this. That she was devastated, with a pain that reached her very soul.

Aureliana stayed for a while, and the fever showed signs of abating.

Then, alone, waves of sickness came over her, leaving her alternately trembling and gasping for breath. It wasn’t sunstroke. She knew that. It was as if her body was rejecting what had happened, trying to expel something she couldn’t name.

When the fever finally broke, late that day, Moira was no longer the same. There was something in her eyes that hadn’t been there before—a shadow that had settled in to stay.

Moira didn’t get the new dress. There was no fifteenth birthday celebration.

Her parents didn’t understand why she didn’t want anything, given how excited she’d been before her birthday.

Spring passed, and she transformed into a shoddy version of herself, a girl who spoke little, hardly ever smiled, and could no longer go to the river; just the thought of it gave her chills.

One late afternoon, she overheard her mum talking to her father, both sitting on the small front porch.

‘I don’t know what’s going on with Moira. She’s sulking, and completely withdrawn from everything. She goes to school reluctantly, rushes through the housework, and every time I come home, she’s holed up in her room. She doesn’t even watch television anymore or meet her friends on weekends...’

‘Don’t worry. It’s just a teenage phase. It’ll pass soon enough...’ he said.

‘I don’t know. Something’s definitely wrong. I know my daughter. When I ask her what’s going on, she just shrugs...’

Moira couldn’t put into words everything she felt inside. How could she explain that her world had shattered that afternoon? How could she tell them that the boss’s son had taken something she’d never get back?

That she’d never be the same. That her dreams were in tatters.

How could she ever love a man? She no longer had her former illusions—of having a boyfriend, a first kiss, what her first time with a man would be like.

Everything she had once imagined had been destroyed. She didn’t even know if she would ever be capable of loving anyone. She felt shame and anger at being a woman.

She felt self-loathing...

Two months passed. Moira’s body changed in ways she didn’t understand.

The school term ended. The end of the year came, and it was precisely at the beginning of the school holidays that she woke up one day vomiting. Aureliana found it strange.

In the days that followed, the same scene repeated itself.

She couldn’t eat. Aureliana confronted her.

‘Moira, what’s going on with you?’ she asked, looking at her suspiciously.

The question hit like lightning. ‘I don’t know, Mum...’

‘I’m taking you to the doctor tomorrow at the health clinic...’

Moira trembled, but there was no other way...

The next morning, the two of them marched off to the doctor. The urges to vomit came and went, and Moira tried to hold it in.

Before being seen, she rushed to the clinic’s toilet and vomited. There was almost nothing in her stomach. What came out was something green splattering against the porcelain of the bowl, as if she were bringing up her liver.

Soon after, feeling a little recovered, they finally called her name and entered the consulting room. The doctor, a thin, middle-aged man with thick glasses, observed her carefully. He asked simple questions, noting them down on a pad:

‘Age?’

‘Fifteen.’

‘Have you started your periods yet?’

Aureliana answered for her, ‘Not yet. But she is close, I think...’

The doctor examined her, took her blood pressure, listened to her heart, palpated her abdomen.

‘Let’s do a pregnancy test, just to rule it out,’ he said. He asked the nurse to collect a urine sample.

Aureliana widened her eyes, looking suspiciously at Moira and then at the doctor.

Moira followed the nurse, who showed her to the bathroom. After some time, she came out and handed over the collected urine sample.

 The nurse dipped a reagent strip into the small vial. She told Moira to wait in the doctor’s room. Minutes later, she entered the room and spoke to the doctor in a low voice.

He looked at the result, then looked at Moira. He took off his glasses, calmly cleaned them, and sighed.

Aureliana became alarmed. ‘What is it, Doctor?’

‘I’m going to order a blood test just to confirm, but all signs indicate you’re pregnant.’

Aureliana fidgeted in her chair. ‘Impossible, Doctor, my daughter’s a virgin...’

‘Is that so?’ The doctor looked at Moira.

She then couldn’t hold back her tears. Aureliana seemed unwilling to believe it.

‘Moira, tell me you’re a virgin... Why are you crying?’

At that instant, she felt irritated with her mum for making her feel even more humiliated.

Between sobs, she replied. ‘No... I’m not.’

Aureliana stood up and held her hands. ‘What do you mean, you’re not a virgin? I want to know...’

The doctor, disconcerted, tried to maintain his professional composure.

He filled out the blood test request and handed it to them along with a note, instructing them to return as soon as they had the result.

As they left, Moira walked through the waiting room with her head down.

She felt as though everyone was looking at her, as if they had heard what had happened inside the consulting room.

On the way back, neither of them exchanged a word.

At home, Moira told them everything. Or almost everything. She avoided the details.

Some pains were too vast for words.

‘Carlos? The boss’s son?’ Aureliana paled.

‘He said if I told anyone...’

Aureliana was floored. For three days, she kept the secret locked in her chest, trying to digest what she’d heard. When she told her husband, he refused to believe it.

‘The girl’s making up stories. The boss’s son wouldn’t do such a thing...’

‘And why would she lie?’

‘She must have got herself into trouble with one of those bumpkins around here and now she wants to blame the lad. Carlos is a good boy. No. She’s hiding the truth. I’ll pressure her until she confesses who it was...’

Perhaps he didn’t want to believe it. He held too much esteem for the boss and the whole family. He’d worked there for many years. He’d known Carlos since he was a boy of four. He couldn’t conceive that that lad, now a young man, would be capable of such a thing.

He didn’t pressure her. Perhaps out of fear. Fear of hearing a truth from her lips that would force him to shatter the world he lived in.

Silence settled over the house like a plague.

Aureliana, desperate, sought out Vivalda—a woman who understood herbs and helped the locals with their ailments. The old healer lived in a small house on the edge of the village, surrounded by medicinal plants she cultivated with the care of someone who knew the earth’s secrets.

‘Bring the girl here,’ Vivalda said, after hearing everything.

Moira went reluctantly, practically dragged. She couldn’t look anyone in the eye.

The very elderly woman, with calloused hands and a face grimy with age and sun, looked at her with pity.

That hurt more than anything else.

‘Drink this,’ Vivalda said, handing her a small vial. ‘This problem can be resolved. I just can’t give you back what was stolen from you...’

Moira drank the bitter potion later, feeling the dark liquid burn her throat. They returned home. They waited. Hours. Nothing happened. Two, then three days passed. Only the routine vomiting. Nothing else. They returned.

‘This baby of yours is stubborn,’ Vivalda said, shaking her head with a mixture of admiration and resignation. ‘It wants to be born no matter what. I gave you a very strong concoction, but some things even the strongest herbs can’t change. You can drink it again, if it doesn’t work. I can’t do anything more...’

Moira’s mum seemed desolate when the second dose had no effect.

From that day on, Moira was forbidden from leaving the surroundings.

She would miss the following school year so that no one would see her pregnant.

She spent months often in her room, seeing the world only through the window, like someone observing life from the outside, no longer able to touch it.

Her belly grew, and so did her own father’s contempt. Her mum tried to protect her, but what could a woman like her do against the world?

The baby was born on a winter afternoon, with Vivalda delivering it in the small back room. Moira held her baby in her arms for just a short time, long enough to etch every detail of that perfect little face and body into her memory.

‘It’s better this way...’ Aureliana said, with tears in her eyes.

It had already been decided. Vivalda took the baby with her a few hours after the birth, promising to deliver it to a good family in the city.

Moira had no choice. She never did...

She didn’t know what she felt. On one hand, the baby would forever be a reminder of Carlos, of what he had done.

On the other, it was also part of her, the only thing truly hers that she had created in the world. When Vivalda left with the child wrapped in a blanket, Moira felt as though a piece of her soul was being carried away.

After that, the house became unbearable. Her father wouldn’t look at her, Aureliana cried in secret, and Moira felt her body was an empty shell.

One morning, from a tin in the kitchen cupboard where Aureliana kept loose change, she took some money. Without saying goodbye, she caught the bus that passed through the village to the city, fleeing the world she had known until then, fleeing from herself, from who she had been.

She couldn’t live there anymore.

She saw her parents as strangers...

They had chosen to keep their jobs over her.

That hurt more than the abuse she’d suffered by the river, even more than the physical pain she’d felt.

The city was bigger and more cruel than Moira had imagined. There were moments when she doubted she was really there. Perhaps it was just a nightmare.

Perhaps she was still asleep at home, and all of this was a figment of the darkest part of her mind.

She wandered the streets. Aimless. Nameless. She looked into shop windows as if trying to recognise herself in the reflection. She saw some job advertisements.

All of them asked for something she didn’t have: experience, references...

She had a snack in a diner. Her hand tightened around the banknote.

The money would run out soon...

When night fell, the cold came with it.

Her coat wasn’t enough, neither for the temperature nor for the loneliness.

She found a hotel where the nightly rate was cheap, but it was a dump, with peeling walls and a dripping tap in the tiny basin.

That’s when it hit her, and the city noise could no longer muffle the pain inside.

Sitting on the edge of the narrow bed, Moira, for the first time, heard fear whispering in her ear. How were her parents? Were they worried about her?

Were they looking for her? Possibly...

But despite the uncertainty, despite her body still bearing traces of childbirth weeks ago, she didn’t think of going back.

It would be worse... ‘I’ll survive,’ she told herself.

The next morning, she tried again. The answers were always the same: dry smiles, hard eyes, a ‘come back another day’, that really meant ‘don’t come back at all.’

By the end of the day, tired even of her own footsteps, she dragged herself to a shelter. There was thin soup to fool her stomach, a flimsy mattress, and the smell of disinfectant mixed with body odours.

But at least there, she was protected from the cold and the rain.

Strangers shared the same roof, a large, damp room, united by one thing only: necessity.

Uncomfortable, she tried to sleep. Her lullaby was the sound of others coughing, spaced-out sneezes, and a radio whispering low in some corner.

Everyone slept as if the world were ending—and perhaps it was, a little more, each night.

Moira didn’t cry. Not yet. She saved her tears as if they were her last coins: a reserve for when nothing else remained.

In the following days, she persisted. Door to door. She felt eyes piercing through her. She was dirty. Her clothes worn, hair needing a wash, tied in a messy bun. Perhaps they thought she was mad. Or destitute. Or both...

On the fourth day, she sat in a park. Her stomach rumbled. The shelter’s soup sustained no one. The winter wind cut through her skin. Her coat no longer felt like a coat. People... passed by her and didn’t see her, as if she were invisible...

That’s when someone saw her.

A young woman. Black hair tied back. Red lipstick. Sweet perfume.

‘What are you doing here alone, love?’

Moira took a moment to realise the woman was speaking to her.

‘I... I was looking for work... I need money, but people...’ Her voice trailed off as tears streamed down her face.

The woman sat beside her, listening, occasionally interrupting, wanting details.

‘I understand,’ she finally said. ‘I know a place. There’s food, there’s a bed. There’s work. Maybe it’s not what you’re expecting, but...’

Moira hesitated. ‘Is it safe?’

The woman smiled, not answering immediately. She simply held out her hand.

Moira looked at the open palm as if staring at her destiny.

Then she stood. She followed. Not because she trusted, but because staying meant dying a little more with each passing minute—and if that was what it meant to live?

Following someone without knowing where, simply because she no longer had a map of herself?’

She was taken to a two-story house with tall windows that dominated the facade.

In the well-tended garden, small ornamental trees with colourful winter foliage—yellows, reds, and oranges—harmoniously divided the space with flower beds brimming with varied blooms.

The property was protected by a wrought iron fence interspersed with concrete pillars that lent solidity to the ensemble—an urban refuge.

Once inside, she was told to wait in a room with a table in the centre, chairs, two floor lamps, books lining one wall, and a portrait featuring a middle-aged woman with classic features.

The same woman entered the room sometime later. She had an erect posture and walked as if not touching the floor. She was dressed elegantly. Her wavy hair, dyed dark red and cut at chin length. She introduced herself before sitting across from Moira, extending a slender hand adorned with discreet rings.

‘Madame Faustine,’ she said. She observed Moira with experienced eyes—the kind that don’t just see, but penetrate. She walked around the girl, examining her like someone appraising a rare piece, silently.

‘How old are you, girl?’ she finally asked.

‘Fifteen...’

‘You’re very pretty. Do you have family?’

‘I have my parents, but I...’

‘Perhaps it would be better to go back to them,’ she cut in, without changing her tone.

‘I can’t. I can’t live with them anymore...’

Madame Faustine was silent for a moment. Then she leaned back in the upholstered armchair, crossing her legs with measured elegance.

‘Tell me your story.’

Moira told it. Her voice, trembling at first, gained rhythm as the words came out—as if each sentence she uttered was a weight lifted from her shoulders. When she finished, her eyes were teary.

‘They look at me as if I’d done something unforgivable... But I was the victim.’

Madame Faustine nodded slowly.

‘I understand you. I’ve seen and heard things in this life you can’t even imagine...’

She paused, then decided: ‘Le’s do this. You can stay for a few days. Help with the house chores, with the cook or with the maid. If you adapt, you stay. If by then you haven’t changed your mind...’

‘I won’t change my mind,’ Moira retorted, firmly.

‘We’ll see,’ Madame Faustine said, with a half-smile.

That night, Moira lay down on clean sheets. The room was small but cosy. The wallpaper had tiny, faded flowers, and the window overlooked the silent back garden. She took a long bath. She put on a nightdress they had left for her on the bed.

For the first time in days, she felt a little bit human.

That’s how Moira learned to survive in a city that didn’t forgive.

Slowly, she began to adapt. First to the house, then to the people, their habits, their peculiarities.

Numbing the pain as the time passed as fast as old scars fading...

She started to understand what was actually happening there—though, at first, she preferred not to see. In time, she began talking to the other girls. She heard stories similar to her own, some even harsher. And, without realising it, she started to feel like she belonged.

Sometimes she thought about her parents. About what happened.

About what she’d left behind. But, as the days—which turned into months, and months into years—passed, all of it grew distant.

As if it had happened to someone else. In another life.

Two and a half years went by.

Moira was no longer the same girl who arrived there on a cold winter afternoon.

She was no longer a child. She made a decision. Not on impulse, nor under pressure.

By choice...

She knocked on Madame Faustine’s office door.

‘I want to work in the salon. With the other girls.’

Madame Faustine took off her spectacles. She placed the paper she was reading on the desk.

‘Are you sure?’

‘I am. Absolutely.’

‘Well...’ she took a deep breath. ‘You’re almost eighteen, I don’t think there’s a problem, and besides, you’ve lived here long enough to know how everything works. How I don’t tolerate abuse. The girls must be treated with respect. What they do is a job like any other...’

‘I know.’

There was a brief silence. Madame Faustine observed her with an indecipherable expression, like someone looking into an antique mirror.

‘Interesting... when I look at you, I see a bit of myself. Not that our stories are the same. But there’s something in you I admire. Courage.’

Moira smiled faintly, a timid gesture. ‘What was your story?’

‘Ah, I hardly ever tell that one...’ she said, reaching for the cigarette holder on the table. She lit the cigarette with the calm of someone who owed time nothing more. ‘I was married. An elegant, influential, and cruel man. He took everything from me: my freedom, my pride, my joy of living. When I asked for a separation, he said I could go. But only with the clothes on my back.’

She took a slow drag before continuing.

‘I was almost thirty. Not as young as you, but I still had some beauty. Without going into too much detail... I ended up in a brothel. I made money, lots of jewellery, and with it, I bought this house. I opened my own business. And here I am.’

She looked at Moira with a certain tenderness. ‘And you? Do you have dreams?’

Moira took a moment to reply. ‘Dreams? Not anymore. I just want to survive.’

Madame Faustine smiled with the corner of her mouth, like someone who understood too much to say everything.

‘The day I walked into that brothel, I made a promise to myself. That I would be for all men, but belong to none. That I would use them, while they thought they were using me.’

That phrase resonated. Inside her, something assented. Perhaps that was it.

To belong to no one. To belong to herself, only...

But still, every night, before falling asleep, she thought of the fourteen-year-old girl who dreamed of a new dress for her fifteenth birthday party.

When spring arrived, there was one certainty: some wounds never heal. They just learn to ache occasionally. Not as intensely, but enough to remind her why they existed...

Spring of 2009

Twenty years later, Moira still woke with a start, images of the past insisting on keeping her company from time to time. She still lived in Madame Faustine’s house.

Now in her early seventies, Madame Faustine had lost some of her vigour, and it was Moira who managed the routine, handling the details with the precision of someone who had learned to survive also through order.

She had sought out her parents five years after abandoning the home where she grew up.

It was with a pain that tore at her chest, slow and precise like a blunt knife, that she learned—from the family now looking after the farm—that her mum had died almost a year prior, of a sudden heart attack, and that her father had disappeared soon after.

No one knew where he had gone.

Why hadn’t she looked for them sooner?

She couldn’t say exactly. Or rather, she knew, but the reasons were so numerous they became muddled: fear of not being welcomed, of their gaze, of questions that would cut like scythes, or even of contempt that would hurt more than if they had railed at her. Fear, too, of not being received...

Perhaps, more than anything, shame. What would she tell them?

What she had become, even if they bore some fault. Or would she be solely to blame for the life she had chosen, although it had been a choice...

But were there other options? Perhaps...

Carlos’s parents had sold the farm months ago.

Suddenly, her entire past had evaporated, leaving only the sensation that none of it had truly existed, or worse, that it had only existed for her, like a scar that throbbed without leaving visible marks. Her body remembered. Her soul did too.

But the world had already moved on, indifferent...

For a long time, stubbornness guided her steps. That same strength that saved her, but also, kept her distant.

Sitting at her dressing table tonight, she looked at herself in the mirror. Her face resembled her mum’s. The delicate features, small nose and mouth.

She resembled her father in no way—a man with reddish skin, indeterminate hair colour, a harsh expression. None of that from him. ’A good thing, too,’ she muttered to her reflection.

But she had inherited his stubbornness.

It was this stubbornness that had brought her here. That made her confront and resist the hardships that life, without any delicacy, imposed upon her.

Not the protection of others. Nor luck. Just this blind force that made her continue, even when nothing else called for continuity.

It was with it that she learned to endure. To get through, without crumbling, everything she should never have lived.

The air was warm, carrying the fragrance of the garden. She decided not to dwell or remain in the past. She got ready with special care.

She meticulously applied her make-up, put on a light dress that flattered her figure, the kind never failed to enchant men.

Everything chosen to drive away any ghosts, or any lingering trace that insisted on returning to her mind...

It had been difficult, but she learned to survive the springs, to resist. A broken heart but mended to continue existing. Not today... she thought.

Moira went down to the salon.

The atmosphere was warm, bathed in yellowish lights that made everything softer, almost intimate.

Low music filled the air amidst laughter, murmured conversations, the clinking of glasses and bottles.

From the bar, where she was talking to the bartender, she saw him enter.

Tall, thin, his hair rigidly slicked back, gleaming under the light—gel, perhaps.

His smart clothes well-ironed, his shoes shined. He dressed with excessive care, like someone trying to appear older, more confident, more certain than he truly was.

Moira calculated: eighteen, nineteen years old, at most.

But she knew that look well. He was nervous. Very...

She approached him with the gentleness she reserved for the younger ones. She had learned, over time, that novices didn’t come merely out of desire.

Often, they brought something harder to name—curiosity, loneliness, escape... or the search for something they didn’t even know how to face, let alone find alone.

‘Good evening,’ she said, with a discreet smile. ‘First time here?’

He nodded, a restrained, almost childish gesture.

‘Would you like a drink?’

‘Yes, I need some...’ he replied in a deep voice that didn’t match his features, as if it belonged to someone much older, somehow familiar...

Moira accompanied him to the bar. He ordered a whisky, which he downed in a single gulp, like someone in need of liquid courage.

She sipped her wine slowly, just observing.

‘You seem tense. Relax...’ she said softly, studying the way he avoided looking directly at her.

He then met her gaze...

A direct look, charged with something she couldn’t immediately decipher.

There was something there—something unsettling.

But she didn’t let it faze her...

‘I imagine you’re looking for some fun, aren’t you?’

‘Yes,’ he replied, looking around.

‘I can call one of the girls for you...’

‘No. I don’t want girls...’

She frowned slightly, intrigued. ‘What do you mean?’

He hesitated for a second. Then, firmly—

‘I want you. I like older women...’

Moira stared at him for an instant, surprised—not because she’d never heard that before, but by the way he’d said it.

There was a raw sincerity in that phrase. Undisguised.

She smiled, with a touch of mischief. ‘Ah... I see...’

There was something about him that touched her.

Perhaps his vulnerability, perhaps the way he looked at her with a mix of desire and respect. She led him upstairs. To her room.

She made him sit on the bed, leaving only the soft glow of the bedside lamps to create a welcoming atmosphere.

‘You’re handsome,’ she said, sitting beside him.

She began to unbutton his shirt, with years of experience, letting his eyes follow her movements.

His hands, with long fingers that resembled those of a pianist, trembled slightly when they then touched her face. ‘You’re very beautiful too...’

When she pulled back the fabric, revealing his young chest, with still-unmatured muscles and little hair, she felt a maternal tenderness that disconcerted her.

‘You’re very young...’ she spoke in a low voice, more to herself.

‘I’m nineteen,’ he said, as if to justify himself.

He then stood up and took off his shoes and trousers in front of her, with a shyness that touched her deeply. When he was just in his briefs, in the dim light of the room, Moira saw the mark on his right thigh, high up, near the groin.

Her heart stopped for a second...

A dark, rounded spot, about the size of a chestnut. Irregular at the edges, as if it had been poorly drawn.

Exactly like hers. Exactly like the one her mum also had.

‘That...’ she began, her voice faltering, in a useless bid to deny the obvious. ‘Is that a tattoo?’

He looked at his own leg, not understanding, a little embarrassed. ‘Of course, not... it’s a birthmark...’

The room seemed to spin around her. ‘Who are your parents?’

He frowned. ‘Why do you care who my parents are? Look, ma’am, I’m not underage, if that’s what you’re thinking...’

‘No, no...’ she said, trying to control her tension. ‘What I meant is are they your real parents?’

‘Such a strange question...’ He began to collect his clothes on the floor. ‘But if you want to know. No... Me and another three were adopted....’

The edge in his tone. That voice... The same drawn-out timbre...

She became alarmed. ‘What about your biological mum?’

‘What about her?’

‘They know who she was?’

He shifted uncomfortably putting on his trousers.

Still suspicious, he replied. ‘They have no idea. Actually, what I know is she died in childbirth...’

Moira felt as if all the breath had been sucked from her lungs. ‘How do you know?’

He shrugged, the muscles in his well-defined jaw tight.

‘Look, I don’t understand this interest in my life. Why so many questions? I just came here to have some fun...’

She stood up. They gaze met for long seconds...

His eyes... Those eyes... The greenish hue...

His hair, despite the gel, betrayed a lighter, familiar shade.

His broad shoulders.  The veins bulging in his arms as he fastens his belt...

The ground seemed to disappear from under her feet. She held onto the metal footboard. The premonition she’d had in the salon, that vague uneasiness, now aligned with brutal clarity.

‘Are you alright, ma’am?’

A nausea welled up slowly, like an old sickness returning from deep within her body. What if she and he had had...

‘What’s your name?’ The words came out as trembling as her legs.

‘Gabriel.’

Twenty years disappeared in a second, and she was back at the river, back to the pain, back to the moment her life had been shattered...

Before she collapsed at his feet, she pulled herself together—just enough—and left the room.

She descended the stairs not feeling the steps under her feet, crossing the saloon, not seeing anyone, anything. Like nothing else existed around her...

Spring, this time, had returned heavier than ever—bringing not just memories, but the very incarnation of what she had once lost.

She went to the garden, to a dark corner, sitting among the flowers, feeling that familiar fragrance. Two decades of painful springs, and now this.

Fate had a cruel sense of humour.

She thought of the girl she once was. Of the dreams she had, which never came true. Of what was taken from her, stolen. Of what she couldn’t live.

She thought of the woman she had become, surviving in fragments.

She thought about  him upstairs, confused, not understanding why she had fled.

Her son. Her boy. So close, and yet so unreachable...

The same feeling as when he had been torn from her arms...

This would never end. She knew that now. No matter how many springs came, she would always carry the weight of that afternoon by the river, of that solitary pregnancy, of that farewell that had lasted a lifetime.

She closed her eyes and let the tears come. For the first time in all these years, she cried not only for all she had suffered, but for the impossibility of love.

For the distance that even chance couldn’t shorten.

Upstairs, Gabriel dressed slowly, still not understanding what had happened. He went downstairs and left into the night, with a strange feeling that he had lost something important without even knowing what.

From where she was, Moira saw him pass, hurrying through the garden, opening the gate, walking along the pavement to a black car parked further down the road.

‘Gabriel. My son Gabriel...’ she whispered, aching to cry it out for the world to hear.

If he heard her, he might well call her mad. The words still echoed, searingly, in her mind: ’She died in childbirth...’

In a way, she had died twenty years before. The girl of nearly fifteen had departed that spring afternoon, and what remained was merely a shadow insisting on inhabiting the body that once belonged to her.

An impostor...

So many questions she longed to ask him. Where did he live? What had his life been like until now? Was he happy?

He would probably never return—and she would never have the answers.

Perhaps that was for the best.

That she should remain, to him, nothing more than a stranger.

It was safer that way—for him, for her—to hold in silence the memory of having seen him well.

To add that serene image to the only one that had stayed with her all those years: the tiny, helpless body she had cradled in her arms the moment he came into the world.

She knew, with the certainty only time can bring, that she would have loved him.

In spite of everything.

Loved him, simply.

She lifted her eyes to the star-strewn sky.

‘Why? What did I do to deserve this?’

Loneliness pressed upon her chest.

A void greater than existence itself…