His Beautiful Deception
She was simply weeping, steadily, quietly, with her hands clenched in the fabric and her eyes fixed on mine.
"Why are you crying?"
"Because I..." She shook her head. "Because it's so unfair."
"It's the past."
"It's not fair. You didn't deserve it."
I looked at her. I looked at the tears, and the trembling mouth, and the enormous, glistening grief in her eyes. It was not pity. It was something much older and more terrible. It was recognition.
She knew.
I do not know how I understood it, in that moment. It was not logic. It was the plain, animal certainty of a man who has stood at the same graveside. She knew what it was to lose someone, and to spend years asking why.