My teflon-strong Maria never cried in front of me. I felt my heart burn with guilt, I was the one putting those tears in her emerald-colored eyes. I had always been the one to make her cry, even though I never actually saw her do so.

I moved to the city where Maria worked at and found work as a car salesman. I lived in an apartment that reminded me of the first one that I had moved into when I was sixteen. I lived an hour away from where Maria and the kids lived so when I wasn't working I spent every waking moment watching them, watching the life that I could have had if it weren't for my mistake.

That mistake, one that I remembered, one that still left wounds open deep down inside of me. It all began one night while I was leaving home from work. I was working as a painter then, and was about to head home. There she was, Isabel, who had been looking for me. She needed a shoulder to cry on. After Alex had died, half of her spirit had left with him also. Even though he had died years ago, the grief that she felt for him only worsened with each day that had gone by without him. So, instead of coming home to my family every night, I began spending time with her. I didn't tell Maria about this though, but I could never hide anything from her. She noticed how I began coming home later and later. And then, that night came.

Isabel came to me that night. Instead of meeting me directly after work, which is what we had done before, she came to me in my home. That night, I forgot about Maria and our kids and the wonderful life that we had made together. I forgot my love for her and remembered the destiny that I had thrown away in the past. We spent those few hours that tested our fate in each others arms and loving each other like lovers did. That part of my memory is still a great blur to me, but one thing that I remember is how I regretted very shortly afterwards.

Maria came home early that night, planning to surprise me by making dinner on time. As she stepped into our bedroom and saw what we had been doing, our lives changed. She kicked me out and told me to never speak to her or see her again. And I obeyed.

As the years rolled by so slowly, I watched the children that we had made together with our love grow. Anna, our oldest child, looked just like her mother. They both shared the same exact facial features as if they were cast from the same mold, I was happy to see that she had gotten her mother’s pouty lips. Anna was just like her mother in every physical way but one. Even though she had Maria’s doe shaped eyes, her eyes were more of a brown hazel color, like my eyes were, than emerald green. From what I had seen from watching them closely for so long, Anna had more of me in her spirit. She was quiet and slightly withdrawn, unlike her mother.

Mark, our son on the other hand seemed to look more like me. He even had the spiky brown hair that I had when I was his age. But he acted more like Maria did. Mark was loud, slightly hysterical at rare times, and shared the same compassion that Maria did.

I had only spoken with the kids once. It was at a carnival that Maria had taken them to over the weekend. Anna and her brother had gotten lost in the huge crowd and were looking for their mother. I had been at the carnival as well, watching them from afar. They came across me, Mark had tears in his eyes as they both said that they were looking for their mother. Even though I had left them when Anna was only five and Mark was three, in a way, my daughter sensed who I really was, but kept it to herself. Mark was still crying and didn’t care to notice. All he cared about was finding his mother. I brought them both to the information booth and had the woman at that stall page Maria Deluca on the loud P.A. system. Before Maria could make her way to them, I left.

After that day, I stopped watching them as often as I did. They had their own lives to follow now it didn’t include me. I had thrown away my opportunity for a life that I could have had four years ago.

That didn’t mean that I stopped watching them all together. Some nights, I would stand outside of Maria’s bedside window and watch her at her vanity table as she brushed her hair, just as I did when we were younger, before we were married. She would sing to herself, but sometimes I would see tears in her eyes. This would always make me remember that one mistake that I had once made.

I cried to myself also when I was alone and in my apartment at night. I cried for her and the loss of the only person who had ever really seen me, and we would never love again because of that. I cried for my grief and the lost opportunity to have the family and life that I had always wanted and the loss of something greater, the only person who always would love me, no matter what happened. I cried because after all of the years, I still loved her. So here I was, Michael Guerin, who had never been known to shed tears, crying to myself. Most of all, I cried for Anna and Mark because they never got a chance to know their real father, he had left them for a destiny that already had died years ago. I cried because time was repeating itself in a way, their father had left them at a very young and vulnerable age, the same with Maria and her father. But time would heal the wounds that I had opened myself years ago. They would know the truth about themselves and their origins and who I was some day. I knew that Maria would tell them