Dashed Hopes

It was Saturday. On the previous day, they had taken the opportunity of it being a weekend to sleep long and uninterrupted as they usually did on most Friday nights. When they woke up on Saturday morning, it was 9 a.m. before they sat for breakfast, and from the beginning even before they sat at the table, it was clear to Leo that Mara was not in the best of moods.

She seemed dull and sometimes deep in thought. He wondered if she had had nightmares during the night. Even though she was so young and looked soft and vulnerable on the outside, she was one of the strongest women he knew. She did not act her age at all and he wondered how she would be in about a decade. As far as he was concerned, any man that married her would be a very lucky man. And her son too was one lucky boy to have such a mother. He wished he had married someone like her in the first place, but instead he had been fooled by Dalia's beauty and "gentleness". It was only after the wedding that he began to get a hint o