“Evelyn?” I whispered.
“She died before Thomas found me.”
Mr. Bennett nodded.
“That’s true.”
“Then how could she leave me anything?”
His expression softened.
“I never said Evelyn didn’t know who you were.”
He pulled out one final envelope.
Across the front, in Evelyn’s handwriting, were four words:
For Margaret, if ever.
PART 2 — THE LETTER FROM THE WOMAN I THOUGHT I HAD REPLACED
For three days, I did not open Evelyn’s letter.
I carried it from room to room.
As long as it remained sealed, she had neither condemned nor welcomed me.
Evelyn remained only Thomas’s first wife—a woman I knew through photographs, stories, recipes, and the habits she had left behind in him.
She was the reason he folded towels in thirds.
The reason he refused canned peaches.
The reason he knew every bird at the feeder.
Marriage leaves fingerprints.
Even after death.
