MARCAS DO DESTINO

Time doesn’t stop

The forty weeks of pregnancy are approaching and with everything ready for the arrival of Arthur, Susana counts the days to receive her half grandchild. The affection that was born in the heart of Susana in relation to Gabriella and little Arthur who was to arrive, was not simply affection, was love of mother and grandmother, after all, with the arrival of Gabriella, it was as if life was giving her a second chance to build a new story, their days have a new meaning. When she decided to help Gabriella, she was not only helping a girl in trouble, she was helping herself.

Eduardo, managing to take the first steps, decides that the first thing he wants to do is to look for Gabriella. Waking up in the morning as usual, he gets up with great difficulty and goes to take a shower and coffee, already at the table with his mother, he makes her a request:

— Mother, I want to see her, I can't stand the wait anymore, Gabriella is the great love of my life, I can't accept an end point with a mere letter.

— Why this now, Edu? I thought you had already forgotten that girl — replied Maristela, surprised by this request.

— No, Mom! I never forgot and I never will! Now that I'm walking again, no doubt the first thing I want to do is to see her again! — he answers without blinking.

Maristela realizes that there is no way to prevent her son from looking for the girl, once again she acts unsoundly, she doesn't think twice, even knowing that her son would suffer, she commits the worst of her mistakes by lying to him.

— Eduardo, my son, I have to tell you since you insist on this idea, I have no other choice but to tell you the truth.

— What truth, mother, what are you talking about? — he asks. Disconnected from everything for so long.

— Your father and I didn't tell you before, ‘cause you’re very weak, but the truth is that the girl who was with you in the car did not resist and died in the accident.

— Stop it, Mum! You are lying, this can't be true, she sent me a letter saying she was leaving with her family.

Wrapping him in her arms, she says:

— I was the one who asked her sister to write the letter when I received the news of the girl's death, understand my son, I didn't want to see you suffer even more.

— NO, MOTHER! I didn't do everything in vain! — he said, unconfirmed. He got up from the table with a despair that Maristela had never seen before, he walked with a limp from one side to the other, the tears of a pain he had never felt before, until he stumbled and fell in the middle of the room crying asking for death and repeating — I killed my love, my life has no more sense without her, it's my fault… I killed my p***y, my great love! I don't want any more of this damn life, mother, I just want to die now, it's over for me, it's the end of the line!

Seeing her despair, Maristela, overwhelmed with the suffering she was causing Eduardo, came to her senses and was about to tell him the truth:

— Calm down… You've already done the s**t, you can't go back now! It will be better this way, it will pass, everything in life passes.

Maristela, crying for making her son suffer, ends up not turning back and remains in the lie, hoping that one day her son will forgive her and who knows, maybe also forget once and for all the feeling for the gardener's daughter. Maristela had no idea of the dimension of love that Eduardo felt for Gabriella when she invented this story, she did not imagine that with this lie she would kill a part of him too. Some days later, when she realized that Eduardo was sinking into a deep depression, completely sorry, without the courage to go back, the alternative was to travel with her son, taking him to study abroad, to see him as before.