I smiled awkwardly and gently pushed the envelope back toward her because I did not want anything except her presence in my life.
“I do not need any of that,” I told her honestly. “Being with you already feels like more than enough for me.”
She looked at me in a way that made my chest tighten, because her eyes were filled with sadness as if she were standing on the edge of something irreversible.
“My dear, before we go any further, I need to tell you something important,” she said carefully, struggling to maintain composure.
A chill ran through me as I watched her slowly remove the shawl from her shoulders, and when my eyes landed on her left shoulder I froze completely in place.
There was a dark circular birthmark with uneven edges, placed exactly where my mother had one that I had seen since childhood.
