Ten Years Later, My Former Husband Asked Me If I Regretted Losing Him — But His Face Fell When He Saw the Photo

Victor pronounced the word “father” as if it were a bomb hidden in the room, and in that instant all confidence disappeared from his face.

“Do you regret now that you lost me?”

I heard this question behind me, in a small restaurant in Kyiv, at fifteen minutes past eight in the evening. The rain struck the windows as if someone outside were trying to get in. I turned around slowly.

Victor was standing at my table. He held a wineglass in his hand, and on his finger he wore the old silver ring that his mother always wore. Even after ten years, he had the same smile — confident, slightly mocking.

“Victor.”

“Did you recognize me?”

“Unfortunately, my memory still works well.”

My uninvited guest laughed and pulled out a chair.

“May I sit?”

He did not even wait for an answer.

And I could not avoid remembering that morning. Ten years earlier, at seven in the morning, he stood in our bedroom and put shirts into a suitcase. On the edge of the bed lay his old clasp, a small copper ship in shape.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“Away from you.”

“What does that mean?”

“I found another woman.”

Karina was twenty-six years old, wore red dresses, and laughed at all of Victor’s jokes. I was thirty-eight years old, worked as an accountant, cared for his mother, and paid the loan on our shared apartment.

“With her I feel young again,” Victor told me.

“What do you feel with me?”

He closed the suitcase clasp.

“As if life were over.”

Those words strangled me for years. Then they became a direction for me.

Victor left the apartment that same day, withdrew the money from the joint account in advance, and left me facing a divorce. I lost my job within a few weeks. For two months I almost did not sleep. In the third month, I got up at six in the morning and began looking for work.

I organized accounts in a small café, and in the evenings studied financial analysis. At forty years of age I sat in an auditorium together with twenty-two-year-old students and felt ridiculous. But I did not stop.

In four years I became head of a department. In seven years, together with two partners, I opened my own consulting company.

Victor knew nothing about this.

“I heard you never married anyone again,” he told me, and turned the small wooden saucer placed under the cup with his finger.

“People hear many things.”

“I always knew you would not be able to forget me.”

“So, all these years you were talking to yourself?”

A crack appeared in his smile.

He told me that Karina had left two years earlier. Their marriage had ended, and he saw his daughter only rarely. Gradually his voice no longer resembled the voice of the man who had once packed a suitcase.

“I recently realized that true closeness was somewhere else,” he said. “Youth passes. Beauty fades. But a reliable person retains their value.”

“Reliable.”

That is what they usually call an old thing that still works every morning.

“Do you want to come back?” I asked.

“Maybe fate brought us together again.”

He placed his hand on mine. I calmly pulled away.

“Do not touch me.”

At that moment my phone flashed. A message appeared on the screen. I smiled involuntarily.

“Who is it?” Victor asked immediately.

“A person who is waiting for me.”

“A man?”

I did not answer.

Victor leaned forward.

“Do you still regret that you lost me?”

I picked up the phone and opened the gallery. I searched for the needed photo for several seconds. When I turned the screen toward him, Victor first held his breath, and then gripped the glass so tightly that the glass clinked near his elbow.

He looked first at the photograph, then at my face, and finally said in a low voice:

“This is impossible…”

I reached toward the folder that lay in my bag, but at that very moment the restaurant door opened and someone called my name…

A young girl stood in the doorway. She was about twelve. Her hair had been tousled by the wind, and in her hand she held a yellow raincoat.

“Mom, forgive me, I’m late.”

Victor stood up from his chair.

“Mom?”

The girl looked at me, then at him, and knitted her brows.

“Is this man?”

“An old acquaintance,” I said.

Victor’s face changed. In the photograph, the same girl was sleeping beside Victor’s mother. On the back of the photograph, a date and a signature were visible, which he had already managed to read.

“Where did you get this?” he asked.

“Not yet.”

“Elene, I need an answer.”

“You should have demanded an answer ten years ago, when you left.”

The girl quietly took my hand. Her fingers were cold, but I felt such strength in them, as if all my past were standing in that hand.

Victor turned the phone toward me again.

“Who is this child?”

“My daughter.”

His lips opened, but he could not make a sound.

“Where is the father?” the girl asked.

Victor lowered his eyes.

I took the folder out of my bag. Inside lay one sealed paper and an old hospital record.

“If you really want an answer, Victor, come to the clinic tomorrow at ten in the morning.”

“Why to the clinic?”

“Because the photograph shows not only what you think it does.”

That night I saw for the first time how frightened my former husband was of his own past.

But in the morning someone else arrived at the clinic before me…

I arrived at the clinic’s glass door at five minutes past ten in the morning. Victor was already there. In his hand he had his old hat, which he squeezed so hard from nervousness that its edges had become wrinkled.

An attorney stood beside him.

“You couldn’t come alone?” I asked.

“I did not know what was happening.”

“Neither did I when you left ten years ago.”

The doctor opened the office door.

“Mrs. Elene, you may come in. You too, Mr. Victor.”

My daughter, Nino, wanted to remain outside. I had already told her that this man might be her biological father, but the word “father” for her was still only an empty place.

Two sealed envelopes lay on the desk in the office. My name was written on one, Victor’s on the other.

“These are the results of the genetic examination,” the doctor said. “The samples were taken with your consent. The accuracy is ninety-nine point nine percent.”

Victor raised his hand.

“Say it directly.”

The doctor opened the envelope.

“Nino is your biological daughter.”

The ticking of the clock sounded in the room.

Victor sank into the chair. His attorney lowered his eyes. And I felt as if a door locked for a long time had opened and air had entered behind it.

“You knew?” Victor asked me.

“No. I found out about the pregnancy that morning when you left. The doctor called me an hour later. You were already gone from the house.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I called you. Three times.”

“I changed my phone.”

“I know. Then I wrote to your lawyer.”

I took a copy of the letter from the folder. It bore the stamp of Victor’s former lawyer.

“Your lawyer replied that the child’s issue was not connected with the divorce because paternity had not been established. At that time I no longer had the strength to chase a man who had left us of his own will.”

Victor buried his head in his hands.

“Nino is my daughter.”

“Now that is only a fact. The rest you must earn.”

He suddenly raised his head.

“I will take her away from you.”

That word cut through me like a knife.

“You cannot take her away. She has not lost a father. She has never had one.”

The attorney whispered something into Victor’s ear. Just then my phone lit up on the doctor’s desk. It was a message from Nino’s teacher: some man had come to the school and was demanding to take the child.

Victor looked at the screen and turned pale.

“It wasn’t me,” he said.

And I realized that someone had already begun acting in Victor’s name…