Eva had no one, only one grandmother. Or rather, there were parents, but when the girl was two years old they died.
Eva did not remember them at all, she knew them only from photos and from the stories of her grandmother.
-“Your father was handsome. When he came to our village, all the girls ran after him. And he loved your mother. It was impossible not to love her. She was slim, beautiful, hardworking. So he took her with him to the city.
Oh, if I had known that this would happen, I would never have let her go. Now I have only one consolation left in my old age – you are my granddaughter, – the grandmother said, kissing her granddaughter’s blond head.
Eva looked at her mother’s photos and wanted to be as beautiful as she was.
Meanwhile, she lived with her grandmother in the village, went to school and pleased with good grades. Like all children Eva was waiting for summer holidays. Not only because she could not study, but because Martin came to the village for the summer.
His grandmother lived next door, so the children became friends right away.
-You’re young and young, you’re always together! – the neighbouring children shouted after them.
To which Eva scolded, and Martin laughed.
-Forget them. They don’t understand anything,” he said and took Eva by the hand to walk together to the outskirts of the village.
But that was childhood, everything seemed childish and simple then. Now Eva was fourteen years old and had finished the eighth grade. There are two more years of school ahead, and then she has to think about her future profession.
-What do you want to be, Eva?” asked Martin as they sat on their favorite lawn, strewn with blue forget-me-nots.
She was silent for a while and, picking a flower, answered:
-A teacher, like my mother. I will study, come to the village and teach children.
Martin laid down with his hands behind his head and, looking at the blue sky with swallows flying around, dreamily said:
-And I will be a pilot. I want to fly high above the ground like these birds and look at the world through their eyes.
Eva smiled, Martin has always been a dreamer and romantic. He read books about aviation and admired pilots and their feats.
Martin sat down, and taking Eva’s hand, seriously asked:
-Are you going to wait for me?
She looked into his blue eyes like the bottomless sky and quietly answered:
-I will.
He brought his face closer to her and kissed her timidly on the lips.
The first kiss is like the first sound from a newborn baby – timid and insistent at the same time.
Eva was overwhelmed with a heartbreaking feeling when she saw on her window a bouquet of blue forget-me-nots that Martin brought her every morning.
“You are my forget-me-not,” he whispered to her, kissing her goodbye.
The summer, filled with happy dreams and first love, ended quickly. Martin was going to the city, and Eva was left waiting for him.
He wrote letters, which she put in a shoebox. There was also a dried bouquet of forget-me-nots, as a memory of the first kiss.
And then there was a summer without him.
“I’m sorry, my sweet forget-me-not!
This summer I need to prepare for entering flight school. I sit in the library all day and read, read, read. But in the evenings I think of you. I dream about you, Eva”, – Martin wrote, enclosing a drawing where he drew a bouquet of forget-me-nots with a pen.
And after another summer, Eva herself went to enter a pedagogical institute. Letters from Martin began to come less and less until they stopped altogether.
She studied to be a teacher and, as she dreamed, came to her native village to teach children.
After some time, Eva married a wonderful man who did not hear a soul in her. She reciprocated his love, but no, no, and sighed looking at the blue sky, on which, leaving a white trail, the plane flew.
Years went by. Her grandmother passed away. Martin’s grandmother too, and he didn’t even come…
Eva had children, two beautiful sons who grew up and went to the city to study.
One day her husband suddenly died…
So Eva became as old as her grandmother was. She retired, but continued to work in the village school because she could not imagine her life without work.
On summer evenings she often went to her and Martin’s lawn and took a sprig of forget-me-nots and looked into the distance.
-Will you wait for me?
-I will.
The words of two lovers echoed in her heart.
But one day she came to the lawn and saw an old man sitting with his back to her. His gray head looked at the evening sky, and in his hand he held a bunch of blue forget-me-nots.
-“Martin,” she whispered.
The old man turned and their eyes met.
“So I came back to you, my forget-me-not,” he said, pressing her dry hand to his wrinkled cheek.
And years of expectations and unfulfilled hopes melted without a trace. And the bitter moments of disappointment, when his trembling lips touched her warm cheek, sank into oblivion.
And now the stars are already appearing in the sky, and white fog falls on the river. But there are two people sitting on the lawn, close to each other and holding hands…