It has been ten years since Antonio passed, and the silence in the house has finally settled from a roar into a quiet, constant hum. Some days, Lola feels a phantom ache, not just for her husband, but for a life that feels... incomplete. Today, her granddaughter is here, helping her sort through boxes of old photographs in the dusty attic. The air smells of paper and time.

Her granddaughter pulls out a small, black-and-white snapshot, its edges softened with age. It's a picture of two girls, barely sixteen, smiling under a blossoming cherry tree. One of them is a young Lola. The other...

Lola's breath catches. She takes the photo, her wrinkled fingers tracing the face of the other girl. Her granddaughter watches her, her expression patient and knowing. After a long silence, Lola looks up, her eyes meeting her granddaughter's.

"She was my first love," Lola says, the words tasting strange and new on her tongue, a truth spoken aloud for the first time in sixty years.

A week passes. The confession has opened a quiet, unspoken bridge between grandmother and granddaughter. One afternoon, Lola finds a small, elegant notepad left on her writing desk, placed directly beside that cherished photograph. On it, in her granddaughter's neat, modern handwriting, is a name, a city, and a phone number. There are no other words. No explanation is needed.

Lola stares at the note for a long time. Her heart, which she thought had grown quiet with age, begins to beat with a slow, heavy, terrifying rhythm. The possibility, once a ghost, is now a concrete thing. A choice.

The day has come. Lola sits at a small table in the corner of a quiet café, a place she suggested, a neutral ground halfway between her past and her present. She has been here for ten minutes, her hands wrapped around a cup of coffee she hasn't touched. Her movements are small, precise. She smooths a non-existent wrinkle on her skirt. She adjusts her silver bracelet. She watches the door.

Then, a shadow falls over her table. A figure comes to a stop before her. Lola doesn't look up immediately. She takes one final, steadying breath, the scent of coffee and old memories filling her lungs. She slowly raises her head.

And there she is.

Time collapses. Sixty years become a single, suspended moment. Her face, a roadmap of a life lived, softens.

"Mon Dieu," she breathes, the words a quiet prayer, a whisper of disbelief and recognition. "You came."