That night, she refused to explain anything.
She said she wanted to tell me everything in the morning.
But when I woke up the next day, Susan’s bed was empty.
Her suitcase was gone.
She wasn’t answering her phone.
And on my table was a white envelope.
There was only one sentence written on it:
“Linda, read this until the end. Then you can hate me.”
I opened the envelope.
The first thing I saw inside was Michael’s handwriting.
My husband’s handwriting.
And after reading the first sentence of that letter, everything slipped from my hands.
For several minutes, I sat on the edge of the bed, unable to pick up the letter.
Michael had been dead for eleven months.
I would have recognized his handwriting anywhere.
During our thirty-two years of marriage, he had left me hundreds of little notes on the refrigerator, birthday cards, shopping lists, and sometimes simply two words:
“I love you.”
There was no possibility that I was mistaken.
Michael had written that letter.
It began:
“Linda, if you are reading this, it means Susan finally decided to tell you what I never had the courage to confess.”
My heart began pounding.
