Chapter 167

New flower beds had been planted in neat rows, the old gravel paths replaced with smooth stone ones, and the once-wild rose bushes trimmed into tidy shapes, yet somehow the air still carried that familiar scent of damp earth and blooming jasmine from all those years ago. Jasmine never forgets, even when everything else does. But only one thing didn’t change.

The oak tree.

Standing in the middle of the garden.

Tall and broad as ever, its thick branches spreading out like protective arms over the grass below. A squirrel darted up its trunk, disappearing into the leaves as if fleeing her memories. She remembered, she had made a promise to this tree that one day she would marry her Hayder. Back then they were so young, laughing and whispering dreams beneath its shade while the sunlight filtered through the leaves in golden patches. The sunlight still fell the same way—she was the one who had changed. She wrote the initials of their names on the bark of that tree with t