Part 3Love Letters from the Past
About 1,181 characters · Part 3 is the last of the three Parts printed here; Part 4 continues in the official app.
I burst into the restaurant to find Margaret pinning some large man against a table, a furious whirlwind of motion. The scene was chaotic. Chairs were overturned, tables askew, and broken plates littered the floor.
As I moved to intervene, her student, Amy, grabbed my arm. “Noah, don’t! You might get hurt.”
I frowned. “She never gets violent when she drinks. What happened?”
Amy sighed. “A couple of jerks were harassing Leo, trying to force him to drink with them. Margaret just lost it…” Her voice trailed off, and she looked at me guiltily. “Noah, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have… Please don’t be mad.”
The seventeen-year-old Margaret would only fight for me. The thirty-year-old Margaret was fighting for another man.
I brushed it off. But as my eyes found Margaret again, they widened in horror.
Our five-year-old son, Alex, was right beside her, his tiny fists pounding uselessly against the man’s leg.
“I’ll get you!” he yelled. “Stop bullying Uncle Leo!”
Enraged, the man grabbed a beer bottle from a nearby table and raised it high, ready to bring it down on my son’s head.
“NO!”
Pure paternal instinct took over. I lunged forward, covering the last few feet in two desperate strides.