Had he ever looked at me and wondered what might have been?
Had he wanted to tell me?
Or had he simply decided that silence was the only way to protect me?
I kept reading.
Joseph returned to see me several times over the years. We never became lovers again. We knew that too much had happened, and too many people could be hurt.
But we became friends.
We spoke about our younger selves, the lives we had lost, and the choices we could no longer change.
He told me that your mother was a good woman who had loved you as her own. He said you deserved to grow up without being made to feel like a mistake.
Then, one day, he told me something that broke my heart.
He had never stopped wondering what our wedding might have been like.
I lowered the letter.
Suddenly, I remembered a conversation from my childhood.
