My boss doesn’t know I’m his wife. I sit outside his office, answer his calls, bring him coffee, and organize his papers. He looks at me, but he doesn’t see me. To him, I’m just the assistant.
But to me, he’s David. My husband. It sounds strange, but it’s true, and it took me ten years of waiting to find him. I grew up in a small village with green trees and a blue river.
David was my neighbor. We played by the water, went to school together, and fell in love young. I was eighteen when we married. A simple wedding, my mother’s homemade dress, and all the hope in the world.
But David had a dream. He wanted more. He wanted to go to America, earn money, build us a big house. “Trust me,” he said at the bus station.
“I’ll write every week. I’ll come back in two years. ” I cried, but I believed him. He got on the bus, and I watched until he disappeared.
For the first year, the letters came. He missed me, worked hard, promised to return. Then they stopped. I waited a week, a month, a year.
I went to the post office every day, but there was nothing. People whispered that he’d found another woman, that he’d forgotten me. My mother begged me to remarry. But I couldn’t.
I wore my ring every day and knew in my heart he was alive. So I studied English, moved to the city, worked in offices, went to university at night. I changed my life. But I never stopped being his wife.
After ten years, I got a job as assistant to the CEO of a big international company. On my first day, my hands were cold, my heart pounding. The door opened, and a man in a gray suit walked in. He was older, tired, with a few gray hairs.
But I knew his eyes. I knew his walk. It was David. He looked at me, and my soul screamed his name.
He just asked, “Who are you? ” I whispered, “I’m Maya. ” He didn’t react. He said, “Bring me coffee.
Black, no sugar. ” And closed the door. I locked myself in the bathroom and cried. How could he not remember me?
We were married. We grew up together. I tested him. I put sugar in his coffee, remembering how he loved it.
He paused, confused, said it tasted familiar. Hope flickered. Then one day, I heard him on the phone with a doctor. “The headaches from the accident,” he said.
“It’s been ten years. I lost my memory of the time before. ” I gasped. He didn’t leave me.
He didn’t forget me. He had an accident and lost everything. The village, the river, our wedding. Me.
I felt sad and furious and hopeful all at once. But I was scared to tell him. He was a rich CEO. I was a poor assistant.
He’d think I wanted his money. So I decided to make him remember. I put yellow flowers from our village on his desk. He smelled them and whispered they made him feel happy and sad.
During a storm, we sat in the dark, and he said he felt like he’d left his heart somewhere. He told me he dreamed of a girl with long hair by a river. I was shaking. Then, at lunch, I showed him an old photo of us on our wedding day.
He went pale. His hands trembled. “This is me,” he said. “And this woman… this is you.
” Tears filled his eyes. “I’m Maya,” I said. “I’m your wife. ”
He broke down.
He remembered the bus, the promise, waking up in the hospital with no ID. He cried and held me. “I forgot you. I left you alone for ten years.
” I didn’t care about the lost years. I held my husband. He hugged me so tight, people in the restaurant stared. We didn’t go back to the office.
We walked in the park for hours, talking, remembering. He put my ring back on my finger. It still fit. We started dating again, slowly, like new people.
He made me a manager. We held hands in the office, and for the first time, he smiled. We returned to the village. My mother cried and hugged him.
We walked by the river, and he remembered playing there as a boy. A year later, we had a baby boy with David’s smile. Life isn’t perfect, but when I bring him coffee at home now, he looks at me and says, “Good morning, my love. ” He knows who I am.
After all this time, he knows. I waited ten years. I never gave up.
And love found its way home.
