Chapter 26: The Echo That Empties the Soul

Chapter 26: The Echo That Empties the Soul

A day before leaving, I looked up at the summit and felt an urgent need in my chest. I asked Ethan to return to the cliff of Dyrhólaey, to the very place where we had met weeks ago with the echo of our piercing screams.

"It's all right," he said immediately, without asking for explanation.

We packed our backpacks, filled our inevitable thermoses with hot coffee and set off for what would be our last hike on Norwegian soil. But this time, the journey was completely different: she no longer walked alone dragging her feet. Ethan, as if he had a mystical radar capable of reading my thoughts and anticipating my emotions, reached out and took my hand for support. I stared at him out of the corner of my eye as we advanced. How is it possible that this man, in so few days, has learned to know my gestures and to know exactly what my body needs? I silently thanked him with a firm grip of fingers and a deep look. He held my pace; I knew perfectly well what it meant.

We reached the top, the exact point where the land opened up to the North Atlantic and where my wedding ring and its gold chain lay buried. I sat on the same mossy rock as last time. I breathed in the icy air and, without planning it, began to speak.

For the first time in my life, I told him in detail about my marriage to Anthony, about fifteen years of blind sacrifice, about the humiliation of betrayal, and the coldness with which I was cast off by a younger woman. I was able to vent completely. I cried, of course I cried, but this time my tears were not of anger or self-pity; They were tears of peace, of absolute tranquility. Saying all that out loud, in front of the sea and in front of someone who really listened to me, caused a miracle: it no longer hurt. Every word freed me from an invisible chain. Ethan stood by me, in a sacred silence, without interrupting or commenting on anything. He only looked at me with his blue eyes fixed on me, holding my pain with the weight of his presence.

When I finished emptying my story, he reached out and offered me the lid of his thermos full of coffee, knowing full well that my throat was burning and that I needed that warmth.