“My uncle once asked me, ‘Are you a virgin?’ when I was already 27 years old. From that moment, I started to be afraid of him. And a few days later, when he took me to a hotel outside the city, he leaned close to my ear by the pool and whispered, ‘After the pool, come up to my room…’”

I stared at him.

“And somehow that became, ‘Are you a virgin?’”

Richard covered his face with one hand.

“I know. It may have been the worst question I’ve ever asked in my life.”

For the first time that day, I laughed.

That night, we stayed in Room 214 until almost midnight, opening my father’s letters one by one.

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Three months later, I opened my little photography studio.

On opening day, the first photograph I put on the wall wasn’t one of my own.

It was an old picture of my father and Richard when they were young.

Underneath it, I wrote just one sentence:

“Sometimes the door you are most afraid to open does not hide your greatest fear… but the love of someone who spent years waiting for you to finally find it.”