“It was,” she said. “But you keep going.”
From that evening on, he returned almost every night.
At first they talked about small things—how difficult work was, how rude customers could be, how expensive life in the city felt. Then the conversations deepened. Grace told him about growing up without parents, about selling food to survive, about how people once mocked her too.
“They said a young girl couldn’t survive alone in this city,” she told him one evening. “They said my food wouldn’t sell.”
“And now?”
Grace gestured to the small crowd buying from her stand and smiled. “Now they come every evening.”
Daniel laughed quietly. “You’re stronger than you look.”
“Life teaches you strength whether you want it or not.”
Little by little, her words began to steady him.
One evening he arrived especially discouraged. Marcus had mocked him all day after he made a mistake repairing an engine.
“For a moment,” Daniel admitted, staring at the ground, “I almost walked away from the workshop.”
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