Then I sat on the edge of the bed.
“I don’t know if I can forgive you yet,” I whispered.
The room was silent.
“But I know I loved you.”
I cried for a long time.
Not because I wanted to erase what she had done.
Not because I wanted to pretend it didn’t matter.
I cried because two truths could exist at the same time.
Carol had hurt me.
And Carol had loved me.
She had made a terrible choice.
And she had spent thirty-six years trying, in her own imperfect way, to be a good wife.
The next morning, I called Anna.
We didn’t talk about the past.
We talked about coffee.
She invited me to visit again.
I said I would.
And I kept that promise.
Over the following months, Anna and I became friends.
Not lovers.
Not the young couple we had once been.
Something different.
Something quieter.
Something built on truth.
Sometimes we talked about the lives we might have had.
But we never tried to live them.
There was no point.
Our lives had already happened.
Instead, we became two people who finally gave each other something we had been denied for decades.
Closure.
