Es Tut Mir Leid -

He didn’t grab his coat. He simply walked out into the cold. Without a word, he lifted the wood, cleared the walkway, and stood there, dripping wet.

He had tried to apologize then, but the words felt too small for the decades of friendship that had frozen along with the petals. Es Tut Mir Leid

Klaus, the town’s clockmaker, was a man of few words and many regrets. For forty years, he had lived next to Greta, a woman whose garden was as vibrant as Klaus’s workshop was dim. They hadn’t spoken since the Great Frost of '98, when Klaus’s faulty furnace pipe had leaked, accidentally wilting Greta’s prize-winning heirloom roses. He didn’t grab his coat