“He didn’t want you to see them,” she whispered.
A buzzing started in my ears.
“They’re his,” she said. “He has two. A boy and a girl.”
The words felt like physical blows.
“You’re saying my husband has children with you?”
She swallowed. “He didn’t want to hurt you. He told me not to bring them today.”
Gasps rippled through the small crowd that had gathered.
Every eye felt like a spotlight. My humiliation had become a public spectacle.
I could not scream there, not with Ray’s body only feet away. I could not collapse.
So I turned and walked out of the chapel.
After the burial, the house felt alien.
Ray’s shoes were still by the door. His favorite mug sat in the drying rack. His reading glasses rested on the nightstand, folded neatly.
I sat on the edge of our bed and stared at the closet shelf.
Ten journals stood in a tidy row, each labeled in his precise handwriting. For years, he had kept them.
“Helps me think,” he used to say.
I had never read them. It felt intrusive, like opening his skull and peering inside.
But Lydia’s words echoed in my mind. A boy and a girl.
I reached for the first journal.
The early entries were almost painfully sweet. He wrote about our terrible honeymoon motel with the broken air conditioner. He wrote about how hard I laughed when we got locked out of our room in our pajamas.
Page after page chronicled our life. There were entries about our first fertility appointment and the day I sobbed in the car afterward.
Leave a Comment