The Wrong Love

The March wind bore a damp chill as it swept through the neatly arranged cypress trees of the cemetery. Holding a bouquet of pale purple forget-me-nots, I slowed my steps and stopped before my mother's gravestone. In the photograph, my mother smiled softly, the delicate lines at the corners of her eyes filled with the warmth of time. I crouched down and placed the bouquet before the stone, my fingertips gently tracing the cold marble. "Mom, I've come to see you." My voice was fragmented by the wind, scattering over the vast cemetery. Soft footsteps came from behind me; I did not turn around. At a time like this, no one would come to disturb. It wasn't until a bright yellow bouquet caught my eye that I slowly turned my face. David Jones stood three meters away, holding a large bunch of sunflowers, their petals trembling gently in the breeze. Five years had passed without seeing each other; he seemed largely unchanged, save for a few more traces of weariness etched between his brows. My gaze settled on his right hand; his index finger was missing a segment, the scar at the break glaring vividly in the sunlight. That was when he saved me—his finger had been torn off by the machine in the process. But that kindness was crushed to ashes the very day he betrayed me. He hesitated, stepped forward, and placed the sunflower beside the forget-me-nots, his voice tinged with barely perceptible hoarseness: "I came to see your mother." I said nothing, simply reached out, took the sunflower, and tossed it into a nearby trash bin. His face paled instantly, his broken-fingered hand clenched involuntarily: "Nancy Scott, do you really have to do this?" "My mother did not like sunflowers." I knelt once more before the gravestone, lit three incense sticks, and said, "She only loved forget-me-nots." The curling smoke from the incense blurred his outline. I watched the flames dance, placing the paper money into the iron basin one by one, the ashes swirling upward with the wind. "It's been five years," he stood behind me, his voice pleading, "Can we please talk properly? I know I was wrong back then, and I have regretted it ever since." "There's nothing to talk about." I cut him off, my eyes still fixed on my mother's photograph, "The past—I've long since let it go."