When He Begged to Reunite, I Walked Away

Chapter 2

At first, I said no.

Jesse and I had both grown up as orphans, just the two of us against the world.

I believed, with all the naivety I had, that nothing and no one could break what we had.

Then Clara fell gravely ill.

Back when we'd been too poor to stay in school, Clara, barely scraping by herself, had been the one to reach out.

She paid our tuition, took us on at her restaurant, and gave us a roof over our heads and three meals a day.

Now she'd worked herself sick, and her own children couldn't be bothered to check on her.

At the same time, Jesse sat me down and laid it all out.

"Penny, I love you. But being with you, I'll never have the life I want.

"I've been poor my whole life. I can't keep living like this. Let's get a divorce."

I sat with it for a long, quiet time.

'Enough money to save a life, in exchange for a man whose heart had already turned. That's not a bad trade.'

So Jesse and I got divorced.

I called Serena, took the money, and paid Clara's medical bills.

Clara died anyway.

And Jesse, who owed her just as much as I did, couldn't even bring himself to see her one last time.

Before she passed, Clara left me the restaurant.

After giving her the burial she deserved, what remained was enough for me to live on comfortably for the rest of my life.

But what good was money now?

Everyone I had loved had left, one by one.

In the end, I was alone.

When I got home, I bought myself a strawberry cake, the first time I'd done that in years.

I was halfway through eating it when the tears came.

I had told myself I'd feel nothing when I saw him again.

I'd been wrong. The ache inside me wouldn't quiet down.

Because I had never, not once, imagined a day when Jesse and I would be over.

After we got married, we believed things would only get better.

Then Jesse got swindled, and what followed was debt that never seemed to end.

Loan shark rates, interest that snowballed faster than we could pay it down, the weight of it pressing the air out of both of us.

He spent every waking hour worrying about money.

I stayed right beside him. Factory shifts.

Delivery runs. Rain or shine, sick or not, we couldn't afford to stop.

We rented a cheap room in the run-down part of town.

We ate wilted vegetables scavenged from the market and discounted scraps.

On my birthday, all there was to mark it was a small, plain cake from the discount shelf.

Jesse held me and cried like a child.

"I'm sorry, Penny. I'm so useless, I have nothing to offer — I'm so sorry I put you through all of this...

"You always talked about wanting strawberries. When I have money, I'll get you the biggest strawberry cake you've ever seen.

"Trust me. I'll work myself to the bone, I'll give you a good life, I promise."

We were genuinely poor back then.

But poor as we were, our hearts were pressed close together.

'As long as he doesn't let go of my hand,' I thought, 'I can get through anything, no matter how hard.'

What I hadn't known was that hearts could change without warning.