Weeks later, Lydia sent a formal letter of apology. I did not respond. Her shame was not my responsibility to soothe.
Instead, I kept writing.
Sometimes I reread Ray’s journals and find the same phrase scattered in the margins and squeezed between lines of grocery calculations and work frustrations.
“I love her.”
He never hid that.
On quiet evenings, when the house feels too still, I sit in our bedroom chair and read those words again.
I am still fifty-five. I am still a widow. I am still learning how to exist in the After.
But I know this with certainty.
The man I buried loved me.
No crumpled note and no act of cruelty disguised as confession can take that truth from me.
