Two years have slipped by without a single word from my daughter: she erased me from her life, and Im nearing my seventieth birthday
In our block, everyone knows my neighbor, ÉlodieFournier. Shes 68, lives alone, and every now and then I pop over with a few pastries for tea, just as neighbors do. Élodie is kind, elegant, perpetually smiling, and loves to recount the trips she took with her late husband. She seldom mentions her own family. Yet on the eve of the last holidays, when I brought her the usual sweets, she suddenly decided to open up. That night I heard a tale that still chills my heart.
When I stepped into her flat, Élodie wasnt her usual self. Normally lively and sprightly, she sat that evening, eyes fixed on nothing. I asked nothing, just set the tea down, placed the biscuits, and settled beside her in silence. She held back for a long while, as if battling herself, then finally let it out:
Two years she hasnt called me even once. No card, no message. Ive tried to reach her, but her number is gone. I dont even know where she lives any more
She paused. It seemed as though years, decades, flashed before her eyes. Then, as if a dam had burst, she began to speak.
We had a happy family. Charles and I married young, but we postponed having childrenwe wanted to live for ourselves first. His job let us travel a lot. We were inseparable, laughed often, and loved the home we built together. With his own hands he constructed a spacious threeroom nest in the heart of Lyon the dream of his life.
When our daughter Amélie was born, Charles seemed reborn. He would cradle her, read her stories, spend every free moment with her. Watching them, I thought I was the luckiest woman alive. Ten years ago, though, Charles died. He fought illness for a long time; we drained almost all our savings trying to save him. Then silence. An emptiness, as if a piece of my heart had been ripped out.
After her fathers death, Amélie drifted away. She took an apartment, wanted to live on her own. I didnt protest she was an adult and had to build her own life. She visited occasionally, we talked, everything seemed normal. But two years ago she came and announced she wanted a mortgage to buy her own place.
I sighed and told her I couldnt help. The savings Charles and I had set aside were nearly gone everything had gone to his treatment. My pension barely covered the bills and my medication. She then suggested selling the apartment. We could buy you a studio in the suburbs, and the rest would be my down payment.
I couldnt agree. It wasnt about money; it was about memory. Those walls, every corner Charles had shaped them himself. All my happiness, my whole life, lived there. How could I abandon it? She shouted that her father had done all that for her, that the apartment would be hers anyway, that I was selfish. I tried to tell her I only hoped one day she would return and remember us but she wouldnt hear a word.
That day she slammed the door. Since then, silence. No call, no visit, not even at holidays. Later I learned from a mutual friend that she did get the loan and now works herself to exhaustion two jobs, an endless race. No family, no children. Even her friend hasnt seen her in six months.
And I I wait. Every day I stare at the phone, hoping it will ring. Nothing. I cant even call her she changed her number. She probably doesnt want to see or hear me any longer. She must think I betrayed her by refusing that day. Yet soon Ill be seventy. I dont know how much longer I have in this flat, how many evenings Ill spend at the window hoping. I cant understand how I could have hurt her so much
