“Because she was already involved.”
“In what?”
Anna didn’t answer.
Instead, she pushed the envelope toward me.
“Read it.”
My hands trembled as I opened it.
The paper was old.
The handwriting was mine.
And the first sentence made my heart stop.
“Anna, if you’re reading this, it means I finally found the courage to choose you.”
I couldn’t continue.
I looked up.
“Why would Carol keep this?”
Anna whispered:
“Because she knew what would happen if you ever found out.”
I looked at the letter again.
And suddenly, for the first time since Carol died, I understood something.
My wife’s final request hadn’t been an act of kindness.
It hadn’t been about giving me closure.
It had been a confession.
A confession she was too afraid to make while she was alive.
But there was still one question I couldn’t answer.
Why had Carol separated Anna and me nearly forty years earlier?
