The Man Who Returned from the Past

My name is Luana, I’m 20 years old, and I’m in my final year of Design school.
People often say I seem older than I am — maybe because I was raised by my mother, Helena, a strong, hard-working woman who never let life break her.

My father died when I was a child, and my mother never remarried.
She worked tirelessly to raise me alone, and I always saw her as the purest example of courage and dignity.

Everything changed the day I joined a volunteer project at college.
That’s where I met Ricardo, the technical coordinator of our team.

He was in his early forties — calm, polite, and with a quiet sadness in his voice, like someone who carried a story he didn’t want to tell.

At first, I only admired him.
But with time, I began to feel something more.
My heart raced every time he was near.

Ricardo was divorced, lived alone, and had no children.
He rarely spoke about his past — only once he said softly:

“I’ve lost something very important… now I just want to live in peace.”

We grew close naturally — no grand promises, no rush — just care and mutual respect.
People whispered:

“She’s so young… what does she see in a man his age?”

But I didn’t care.
With Ricardo, I felt something I had never felt before: peace.

One day, he looked at me and said:

“Luana, I want to meet your mother. I don’t want to hide our relationship anymore.”

I was nervous.
My mother was protective and suspicious of everyone.
But if what we felt was real, there was nothing to hide.

That Sunday, Ricardo came to our house with a bouquet of daisies — my mother’s favorite flowers, which I had once mentioned in passing.
We arrived hand in hand, and he seemed calm… until the gate opened.

Mom was watering the plants.
When she turned around and saw him, she froze.
The watering can slipped from her hands.
For a moment, I thought she might faint.

Suddenly, she ran toward Ricardo — embraced him tightly, and began to cry as if she had just seen a ghost.

“My God… Ricardo?! Is it really you?!”

I stood there, stunned.
Ricardo went pale, his voice trembling:
“Helena?… It can’t be…”

I looked from one to the other, completely lost.
My mother’s hands were shaking, her tears falling uncontrollably.

“Twenty years, Ricardo… twenty years thinking you were dead…”

My heart nearly stopped.
“Mom… what are you talking about?”

She took a deep breath, her voice breaking:
“Sweetheart… this man — Ricardo — he was the love of my life. Before I met your father.”

Ricardo lowered his head, eyes filled with tears.
“I never knew… you had married. When I came back, it was too late. I tried to move on, but life… it just took me elsewhere.”

The room fell silent.
Mom cried, Ricardo trembled, and I — I didn’t know what to feel.
Love, confusion, anger, shock — everything mixed together.

That night, we sat down and talked for hours.
Mom told me they had met in their youth, and that he had disappeared after a boating accident. Everyone believed he had died.
Ricardo explained that he had survived but lost his memory for months after being rescued — and only years later regained fragments of his past.

Their reunion was both painful and healing.
My mother was reliving a love she had buried decades ago.
And I was trying to understand how the man I loved was connected to the past that shaped my very life.

Days passed, and time slowly put everything back in place.
Ricardo distanced himself, out of respect, asking for time to process it all.
And though my heart ached, I understood that some loves appear not to stay — but to reveal the truths we need to face.

Today, when I look back, I see that life has a strange way of closing its circles.
Sometimes the people we meet are not meant to belong to our future — they’re meant to heal our past.

And in that embrace between my mother and the man I once loved,
I realized that life always finds a way to bring peace to old wounds — even when it breaks our hearts to do so.