NOT GIVING UP ON FOREVER

Chapter 91

Anna walked home in the pouring rain. The rain was merciless. It looked like heaven intended to wash the Earth from its endless sins. It poured on the streets and pavements, streaking every object on its way.

It was that rain—the water of revival and remorse, power and transformation. Everything buckled under the force of its flow.

Anna was watching a poor, drenched, middle-aged gentleman. To his misfortune, he had been caught in the middle of a downpour. He hurried home as fast as he could, his feet slithering, slipping, and sinking in the mud, but his expression betrayed the thought at home, he would find a dry bed and a hot supper, perhaps wife and children.

Anna ambled as if hoping that the water would wash away the whole day with all its words and events. She had left Mark alone on the balcony, calling him names in desperation, blaming him for all the troubles of her life and threatening that it was not him who should whine about the sad fate but her, because everything had gone downhill when he left her alone face to face with destiny. She accused him of being a weakling and a coward, of not fighting for them. That if he loved her, he would have never given up.

She regretted every word she uttered, but she couldn't stop herself at that moment. Mark listened with bowed head and guilty eyes full of tears. She had never seen him cry, never seen his face express so much pain.

She was walking down the street now, rewinding the conversation over and over, over and over. Mark had brought back in one night all the heart-rending memories and dreams that Anna had buried with a superhuman effort. Her cherished dreams of marriage, children, husband, and simple domestic happiness, had been forcibly drawn from the depths of her heart, and pain had again pierced her whole being.

"Oh, Mark... How comes... Why are you..." The rain's noise swallowed her sentence.

The man ahead of Anna ran up to the porch of his house, met by his wife and two daughters, who immediately threw a huge towel over him and joyfully hugged him.