The old man looks down at the scattered photographs, moving them into some semblance of order. His nails are neat, but his knuckles are thickened by years of injury. “You could have come to me.”
She wheezes a laugh. “Turned up on your doorstep? What would you have done then?”
“Fucked you until you passed out.”
“No. I don’t think so.”
“You don’t know me. You never did!” He shoves the stack of photographs back across the table. “Keep your fucking mementos. It’s like a gallery of self-pity. It’s disgusting.” Then he takes a deep breath, straightens his big frame, and shakes his head. “I wouldn’t have sent you away.”
“How could I know that?”
A growl rumbles in his broad chest. The grey of at his temples glints in the light. “How could you *not* know that? After all those years?”
“I didn’t trust you. I loved you, though. Why didn’t you come to me?” Suddenly the old woman’s eyes are brimming with tears. They trickle into the creases of skin.
His laugh is a bark. Sharp, bitter. “What? I’d turn up in some sewer of a city at the ass-end of the universe just so you could change your mind?”
The old woman says nothing.
Temper simmers beneath the surface of his aged face. “And you would have. Wouldn’t you?”
She looks stricken. Cornered. “I don’t know.”
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