She Was Never Unfaithful

Two years later, I returned to Brazil to get married.

The city looked the same — crowded streets, noisy bazaars, and familiar faces — but inside me, everything had changed. I had spent two years carrying hatred in my heart for the girl I once loved. The girl I believed had betrayed me.

While shopping in the market one afternoon, I unexpectedly came face to face with her mother.

The moment she saw me, her eyes filled with tears.

She held my hand tightly and said in a trembling voice,

“My daughter loved you more than her own life.”

I stood frozen.

She continued,

“My husband and sons beat her mercilessly because she refused to forget you. No matter how much pain they caused her, she kept taking your name. She always believed that one day you would come back and fix everything.”

Every word felt like a knife entering my chest.

“She finally agreed to marry someone else,” her mother whispered, “but only because she couldn’t watch her father threaten suicide anymore.”

My heartbeat slowed.

“She got married… but she never found peace. She became like a living corpse. She stopped talking to people. She neither laughed nor cried. Slowly, she began losing her mind.”

I could barely breathe.

“Her husband eventually divorced her. I tried everything to cure her, but her condition kept getting worse. In the end, we had to tie her down because she would wander away. People stopped calling her by her name. They simply called her mad.”

Tears rolled down her mother’s cheeks.

“And then one day… she disappeared.”

My soul shook.

For two years, I had hated the one person who had loved me beyond limits.

For two years, I had called her disloyal while she was sacrificing her entire life to protect my name.

That day, I decided I would never marry.

And I never left Brazil again.

For the past year, I searched for her like a madman.

I wandered through streets, markets, bus stations, and old neighborhoods calling her name. Every woman in torn clothes made my heart stop. Every shadow looked like her.

But she was nowhere.

Then one evening, as the sun disappeared behind the dusty horizon, I reached an old graveyard on the outskirts of the city.

A frail old man was lighting small lamps near the graves.

I showed him her picture.

The old man stared at it for a long moment, and suddenly his eyes became wet.

Without saying a word, he pointed toward a small unmarked grave.

There was no name written on it.

Only a dried rose rested on the cold soil.

The old man spoke softly,

“Son… this girl came here months ago. She barely spoke. She would sit beside this graveyard all day, drawing invisible lines in the dirt.”

I felt my legs weaken.

“One freezing night,” he continued, “she died here alone.”

The world around me went silent.

“Before dying,” he said, “she wrote a name on the ground.”

My hands trembled as I fell beside the grave.

I slowly wiped away the dust covering the soil.

And then I saw it.

My name.

Written faintly with fragile fingers.

Below it were words that shattered whatever remained inside me:

“I was never unfaithful.”

At that moment, I realized the truth.

While I spent two years hating her, she spent those same two years dying silently… carrying the burden of love, sacrifice, and helplessness alone.

I collapsed onto her grave and cried like a broken child.

I wanted to tell her that I finally understood.

I wanted to tell her that I forgave her.

But life had become crueler than regret itself.

Because now… there was no one left to hear me.

Today, my search has ended.

But my punishment has just begun.

Every night, her silent eyes return to me in my dreams. Eyes filled not with anger, but with one painful question:

“Was my only mistake that I tried to stay loyal?”

And no matter how much I cry…

I still cannot answer her.