Chapter 27: The Heartbeat That Wasn't

After a few minutes of absolute silence in which I managed to calm down, the wind seemed to die down on the cliff. It was then that Ethan looked away at the sea horizon and began to speak in his hoarse voice, finally revealing the crack through which his life had slipped away.

"I had been in a relationship for a long time, too," he began, and his knuckles turned white as he squeezed his thermos. We had been living together for some years in Iceland. Everything was going well until she decided that my publishing house was too little for her aspirations. He was ashamed to admit to his social circles that he lived with the owner of a small bookstore. To please her, I agreed to move to the capital, Reykjavik. There I looked for a corporate job that I abhorred with my soul, but where it was very well earned, just so that she would feel safe and not be ashamed of me. That's how we lived for two whole years, emptying myself inside to meet their expectations.

Ethan swallowed hard, and the shadow of terrible agony crossed his face.

"Until one day she arrived at the house furious, out of her mind. She yelled at me that she was pregnant. Astrid... For me it was the greatest happiness of my life. We were going to have a son, our son. I went over to hug her with a wild heart, but she let go of me with contempt. She told me coldly that she didn't want that child and that she didn't want to continue with me either. I... I was just preparing the marriage proposal for that same week. She spat in my face that she was going to abort my son, that she didn't love me and that she had three days to get my things out of the house because she was leaving the country for an activity at work.

A heavy tear slid down Ethan's weathered cheek, getting lost in his beard.

"In a matter of a few hours, my whole life went to waste. I no longer had a home, I no longer had a partner... And worst of all, I lost my unborn son. I couldn't hear his heart, I couldn't see a single ultrasound, nothing. I didn't have any physical memory of him. I loved him, Astrid. For my part, I was a deeply loved child before I was born, but she only thought that a pregnancy was going to harm her body and her career. That destroyed me. The breakup didn't disarm me, it destroyed me to lose my son. I just wanted a home, a family. But my world fell apart. I packed what I could into a suitcase and escaped. I arrived in this village in Norway exactly three days before you.

I looked at him with a heavy soul, finally understanding the magnitude of the black ocean that this man carried inside. His large hands, those that had served as support, had been holding the pieces of an invisible and heartbreaking mourning. I stretched out my hand, and this time it was I who intertwined her fingers with his on the cliff rock.