Still, she felt the quiet gravity of his regret pressing into the space between them. Whatever he’d lived through, whatever he’d lost, had carved itself deeply into him. Elise found herself wanting to understand, but not wanting to push him there before he was ready. She figured she would speak until he felt ready to share his story.
Elise found herself filling the quiet with memories she hadn’t revisited in years. “My grandmother never talked about her early adulthood,” she said. “It was the one part of her life she always sidestepped. Even my dad didn’t know much. She kept those years locked away. The war must’ve displaced so many people and their dreams.”