— Grandpa, Grandpa, — Mary lamented, sitting by the grave, — now you’ve left me too, everyone has left me, I’m all alone. How I miss you! You were my only close person. Honestly, I’d give anything to have you by my side, but alas, death is irreversible, and no matter how much I want to, I can’t bring you back.
That day, the woman came to her native small town, where she visited quite often. Before, Mary could stay here for a week or even two, to spend time with her beloved grandfather, but now she wanted to leave as soon as possible. Nothing held her in these parts anymore, except the old house.
«Who needs this rundown place? — she pondered. — Let it stand until it completely collapses.» Demolishing the house and building something new was something Mary couldn’t bring herself to do, although she had enough money for it. She had long ago moved out of the small town, risen from the very bottom over many years, and achieved success.
Samuel Peterson was very proud of his granddaughter. «What a smart girl you’ve turned out to be, — he would say. — It’s a pity your mother didn’t live to see this day, and your grandmother also went underground too early. And she could have lived and lived. They would have admired you.»
When her grandfather spoke like that, Mary would get embarrassed. She didn’t think she had reached any special heights — she had just established a decent life of an average middle-class person. But for Samuel Peterson, her income seemed fabulous. No one in their family had managed to rise like that. Mary was the first to escape utter poverty and achieve something. However, what pleased the old man most was that she hadn’t become arrogant.
When Mary left for the big city in her youth, Samuel Peterson feared that she would forget him, start shunning her rural relative, and not extend a hand in difficult times. But, fortunately, that didn’t happen. She maintained the same respect and reverence for her grandfather until the very end of his days. Over many years, she not only sent him money but also visited regularly, stayed for long periods, and told him about her life.
True, not everything. She kept personal matters to herself — she didn’t want to worry the old man, and it probably wasn’t interesting to him anyway. Samuel Peterson held up well for a long time. Mary was sure he would live many more years. But her hopes were not justified. The illness struck the old man so suddenly that he didn’t have time to recover before he found himself on his deathbed.
«I never thought, never guessed it would turn out like this,» — sighed Samuel Peterson in his last days, holding his granddaughter’s hand tightly. Upon learning that her grandfather was ill, Mary dropped everything and rushed to the small town. Though the old man protested, assuring her it wasn’t worth worrying, she sensed something was wrong in her heart. Her premonitions were confirmed: after examinations, the doctor gave Samuel Peterson an unfavorable verdict.
«Doctor, how much longer do I have?» — asked the old man. «I haven’t given my granddaughter away in marriage yet, and you’re already sending me to die.» «It’s not up to me,» — sighed the doctor. «That’s life. No one is insured against anything, as they say, we all walk under God. Nothing can be done.»
Samuel Peterson had only to accept his fate, so merciless to him. No matter how much he wanted to celebrate at Mary’s wedding and babysit his great-grandchildren, it was not meant to be. Each day he got worse, and gradually losing touch with reality, he finally understood that his days were numbered.
How Mary grieved! It seemed to her that the wound in her soul after her grandfather’s death would never heal. She regularly visited his grave, sat at the cemetery for hours, and talked to Samuel Peterson. It was the same that day: immersed in her thoughts, she was telling her grandfather something, but her monologue was interrupted by a sudden vision.
Without noticing it herself, Mary turned her head to the side opposite the grave. She heard a strange rustling — as if someone ran across the ground, sat on a bench, and cried. «My God!» — she exclaimed and almost lost her speech. For a moment she froze, but a second later she came to her senses. «It seemed to me,» — she said to herself, feeling abnormal.
At that same moment, other memories overwhelmed her, which she tried with all her might to erase from her memory. It seemed to her that over so many years the emotional wound had healed, but no — all the painful moments were alive, and Mary couldn’t get rid of them. «Why did I do that, Grandpa?» — she asked, looking at the smiling Samuel Peterson in the photograph. «If I hadn’t acted so recklessly then, you would have seen your great-granddaughter.»
Despite her successes and achievements, Mary never felt happy. She was always tormented by a sense of incompleteness, and only she knew why. This secret the woman trusted to no one, keeping it deep in her memory.
In her youth, Mary was an ordinary girl: she pondered life, dreamed, made plans, and, of course, fell in love. She wasn’t flighty and believed that true love comes once and forever. Therefore, when warm relations developed between her and the neighbor boy Steven, Mary began to persuade him to leave with her for the city after coming of age.
«Why are you refusing? — she wondered. — These are such opportunities, such prospects! We’ll have a family, we’ll get on our feet, achieve everything, live long and happily.» But Steven didn’t want to leave. His native small town was home to him, and he couldn’t abandon his mother, for whom he was the only support. His mother didn’t approve of their relationship, and Samuel Peterson, unsociable and aloof, didn’t even suspect it. There was no one to tell him that his granddaughter had fallen in love, and Mary didn’t share such intimate things with her grandfather.