The thing I was terrified of seeing was written in the next few lines.
Michael and Susan had been having an affair.
Not once.
Not one accidental mistake.
It had lasted almost eight months.
I threw the letter onto the floor.
The first thing I felt wasn’t even anger.
It was disbelief.
Susan?
The girl who had gotten into a fight when we were twelve because someone at school had insulted me?
The woman who stood beside me at my wedding?
The woman who held me when I lost my first baby?
The woman who sat beside me all night at the hospital when Michael had heart surgery?
She had known all along?
I grabbed my phone and called her.
It was turned off.
I called again.
Nothing.
Then I continued reading.
Michael wrote that after eight months, he had been the one to end the affair. According to him, Susan had already wanted to tell me everything.
Michael had begged her not to.
He wrote:
If we told you the truth, I would lose you, and you would lose both your husband and your best friend at the same time.
That sentence made me even angrier.
They had made the decision for me.
They had even decided how much pain I was allowed to know.
Then I reached the hardest part.
Over the years, Susan had tried several times to leave my life.
And suddenly, I remembered.
Once, out of nowhere, she told me she wanted to move to another state.
I had cried.
I had told her,
“I’m not letting you go. You’re my family.”
She stayed.
Now I understood why she had held me for so long that day.
Another time, she stopped coming to our house for months. I became upset and forced her to explain.
She told me she was simply busy with work.
It had been a lie.
She was trying to distance herself from me.
And every time, I pulled her back into my life.
At the end of the letter, Michael wrote that after he was diagnosed with cancer, he had made Susan promise that she would tell me everything after his death.
I knew nothing about that.
During the final weeks of his life, Michael often spoke privately with Susan.
I thought he was asking her to take care of me once he was gone.
