Exhalation

by Ted Chiang

Over the years I became wealthy, but I never remarried. Some of the men I did business with tried to match me with a sister or a daughter, telling me that the love of a woman can make you forget your pains. Perhaps they are right, but it cannot make you forget the pain you caused another. Whenever I imagined myself marrying another woman, I remembered the look of hurt in Najya’s eyes when I last saw her, and my heart was closed to others.

“Coincidence and intention are two sides of a tapestry, my lord. You may find one more agreeable to look at, but you cannot say one is true and the other is false.”

Nothing erases the past. There is repentance, there is atonement, and there is forgiveness. That is all, but that is enough.