We were both smiling.
But then I noticed that Susan’s hand was trembling.
“What’s going on?”
She was silent for a long time.
Then she said one sentence I still can’t forget.
“Tomorrow, you’ll find out who I’ve really been in your life.”
The rest of the story is in the comments 👇‼️
That night, she refused to explain.
She said she wanted to tell me everything in the morning.
But when I woke up the next day, Susan’s bed was empty.
Her suitcase was gone.
She wasn’t answering her phone.
And there was a white envelope sitting on my table.
Only one thing was written on it:
Linda, read this all the way to the end. Then you can hate me.
I opened the envelope.
The first thing I saw inside was Michael’s handwriting.
My husband’s handwriting.
And after I read the first sentence of the letter, everything fell from my hands.
For several minutes, I just sat on the edge of the bed, unable to pick the letter back up.
Michael had died eleven months earlier.
I would have recognized his handwriting anywhere.
During our thirty-two years of marriage, he had left me hundreds of little notes on the refrigerator, written birthday cards, grocery lists, and sometimes just two words:
I love you.
There was no possibility I was mistaken.
Michael had written that letter.
It began:
Linda, if you are ever reading this, it means Susan has finally decided to tell you what I never had the courage to tell you myself.
My heart began pounding.
I kept reading.
Michael wrote that during the twentieth year of our marriage, he had done something he had never forgiven himself for.
That was the year I spent months caring for my sick mother. I stayed at her house most of the week.
I remembered that period clearly.
Susan was going through a difficult time too. Her marriage had just ended. She often came to our house. Sometimes I was the one who asked her to stop by and see Michael, bring him dinner, or simply keep him company.
Then I reached one sentence in the letter and stopped.
I didn’t want to continue.
But I already knew.
