Regret is never as simple as outsiders imagine.
Did you regret the humiliation? Sometimes.
The danger? Often.
The loss of ordinary youth, of motorcycles and stupid freedom and anonymous mistakes? On your worst days, yes.
But regret is not the same thing as wishing you had chosen another life.
When Celia turned seventy, you took her back to the half-renovated house where you had proposed.
It had since been restored and converted into a foundation center for women leaving coercive relationships and financially abusive households. That had been her idea, then yours, then both of yours together. The opening plaque carried no grand family name. Just a line engraved in steel near the entrance:
Truth does not always save you gently, but it saves you clean.
That night, after the speeches and guests and quiet gratitude of women who finally had somewhere to go, the two of you stood alone in the old front room where wind had once moved through missing windows. The house was whole now. So were some parts of you.
Celia leaned against your shoulder.
“You know,” she said, “for a while after the wedding, I thought the worst thing I had ever done was tell you too late.”
You turned your head toward her. “What changed?”
She smiled, the older, softer smile you had come to treasure more than beauty. “I realized the worst thing would have been never letting myself be loved at all.”
You kissed her temple.
Outside, the evening was folding down over the fields, turning everything gold and then blue. Somewhere in the distance, a dog barked. Somewhere closer, laughter drifted from the courtyard where volunteers were stacking chairs. Ordinary sounds. Honest ones.
You thought back to that wedding night sometimes.
The scars.
The lawyers.
The guards.
The slip of hijo that nearly shattered something fragile before it had even properly begun.
For a long time you believed that was the night your marriage almost died.
You understand it differently now.
That was the night illusion died.
