And I had never known.
“Why didn’t she tell me?” I asked.
Mr. Reed lowered his eyes.
“She was afraid.”
“Of what?”
“That you might feel she had come back into your life only because she was dying. She wanted to know you as a person before asking you to face the past.”
I shook my head, tears burning my eyes.
“She could have told me.”
“Yes,” he said quietly. “She could have.”
I looked toward the fresh earth covering her grave.
“She let me marry her without knowing who she was.”
“She knew that you might never agree to a wedding if she told you the truth first. She didn’t want you to feel obligated to her.”
“That doesn’t make it right.”
“No,” he replied. “It doesn’t.”
His honesty surprised me.
He didn’t try to defend her decision or tell me how I should feel.
He simply sat beside me while I struggled with the knowledge that my life had been built on a story I had never heard.
