That night, she refused to explain anything.<\/p>\n
She said she wanted to tell me everything in the morning.<\/p>\n
But when I woke up the next day, Susan\u2019s bed was empty.<\/p>\n
Her suitcase was gone.<\/p>\n
She wasn\u2019t answering her phone.<\/p>\n
And on my table was a white envelope.<\/p>\n
There was only one sentence written on it:<\/p>\n
\u201cLinda, read this until the end. Then you can hate me.\u201d<\/p>\n
I opened the envelope.<\/p>\n
The first thing I saw inside was Michael\u2019s handwriting.<\/p>\n
My husband\u2019s handwriting.<\/p>\n
And after reading the first sentence of that letter, everything slipped from my hands.<\/p>\n
For several minutes, I sat on the edge of the bed, unable to pick up the letter.<\/p>\n
Michael had been dead for eleven months.<\/p>\n
I would have recognized his handwriting anywhere.<\/p>\n
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:<\/p>\n
\u201cI love you.\u201d<\/p>\n
There was no possibility that I was mistaken.<\/p>\n
Michael had written that letter.<\/p>\n
It began:<\/p>\n
\u201cLinda, if you are reading this, it means Susan finally decided to tell you what I never had the courage to confess.\u201d<\/p>\n
My heart began pounding.<\/p>\n
I kept reading.<\/p>\n
Michael wrote that during the twentieth year of our marriage, he had done something he could never forgive himself for.<\/p>\n
That was the year I spent months caring for my sick mother. I stayed at her house most of the week.<\/p>\n
I remembered that time perfectly.<\/p>\n
Susan was also going through a difficult period. Her marriage had just ended. She came to our house frequently.<\/p>\n
Sometimes I was even the one who asked her to stop by, bring Michael something for dinner, or simply keep him company.<\/p>\n
Then I reached a sentence in the letter and stopped.<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t want to keep reading.<\/p>\n
But I already knew.<\/p>\n
What I was most afraid of finding was written in the next few lines.<\/p>\n
Michael and Susan had had an affair.<\/p>\n
Not just once.<\/p>\n
It hadn\u2019t been an accidental mistake.s<\/p>\n
It had lasted almost eight months.<\/p>\n
I threw the letter onto the floor.<\/p>\n
The first thing I felt wasn\u2019t even anger.<\/p>\n
It was disbelief.<\/p>\n
Susan?<\/p>\n
The girl who, when we were twelve, had gotten into a fight at school because someone insulted me?<\/p>\n
The woman who stood beside me on my wedding day?<\/p>\n
The woman who hugged me when I lost my first baby?<\/p>\n
The woman who spent the entire night with me in the hospital when Michael had to undergo heart surgery?<\/p>\n
She had known all along?<\/p>\n
I grabbed my phone and called her.<\/p>\n
It was turned off.<\/p>\n
I called again.<\/p>\n
Nothing.<\/p>\n
So I continued reading.<\/p>\n
Michael wrote that after eight months, he was the one who ended the relationship.<\/p>\n
According to him, Susan already wanted to tell me the whole truth.<\/p>\n
Michael had begged her not to.<\/p>\n
He wrote:<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we had told you the truth, I would have lost you, and you would have lost your husband and your best friend at the same time.\u201d<\/p>\n
That sentence made me even angrier.<\/p>\n
They had made the decision for me.<\/p>\n
They had even decided how much pain I was allowed to know.<\/p>\n
Then I reached the hardest part.<\/p>\n
Over the years, Susan had tried several times to leave my life.<\/p>\n
And suddenly, I remembered.<\/p>\n
Once, without any explanation, she told me she wanted to move to another state.<\/p>\n
I cried.<\/p>\n
I told her:<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not going to let you leave. You\u2019re my family.\u201d<\/p>\n
She stayed.<\/p>\n
Now I understood why she had hugged me for so long that day.<\/p>\n
Another time, she stopped coming to our house for months.<\/p>\n
I got angry and forced her to explain what was going on.<\/p>\n
She told me she was simply very busy with work.<\/p>\n
It was a lie.<\/p>\n
She was trying to distance herself from me.<\/p>\n
And every time, I pulled her back into my life.<\/p>\n
At the end of the letter, Michael wrote that after he was diagnosed with cancer, he had made Susan promise that she would tell me the whole truth after his death.<\/p>\n
I knew nothing about it.<\/p>\n
During the last few weeks of his life, Michael often spoke privately with Susan.<\/p>\n
I thought he was asking her to take care of me after he was gone.s<\/p>\n
It turned out he was actually asking her to finally stop lying to me.<\/p>\n
I was still reading when someone knocked on the door.<\/p>\n
It was Susan.<\/p>\n
She hadn\u2019t run away.<\/p>\n
She had simply spent the entire morning sitting in the caf\u00e9 across from the hotel.<\/p>\n
When I opened the door, she didn\u2019t even try to smile.<\/p>\n
\u201cDid you read it?\u201d<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t want to slap her.<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t even want to scream.<\/p>\n
And somehow, that was worse.<\/p>\n
I simply asked:<\/p>\n
\u201cHow many times did you sit at my table, look me in the eye, and remember that you had slept with my husband?\u201d<\/p>\n
Her face went pale.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery time.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd when he died and I cried in your arms?\u201d<\/p>\n
Susan\u2019s eyes filled with tears.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery minute.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd when you told me Michael loved me?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe did love you.\u201d<\/p>\n
For the first time, I raised my voice.<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t defend him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Susan remained silent.<\/p>\n
Then she sat down in a chair and told me something that wasn\u2019t in the letter.<\/p>\n
\u201cI fell in love with him.\u201d<\/p>\n
The room went completely silent.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd him?\u201d<\/p>\n
Susan lowered her eyes.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought he loved me too. But when I told him he had to choose, he ended it with me that same day. He said he would never leave you.\u201d<\/p>\n
Was that supposed to comfort me?<\/p>\n
It didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
I asked her:<\/p>\n
\u201cThen why did you stay in my life for another twelve years?\u201d<\/p>\n
For a long time, she didn\u2019t answer.<\/p>\n
Then she said:<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause I had already lost my marriage. I had lost Michael. If I lost you too, I wouldn\u2019t have anything left. And yes, it was selfish.\u201d<\/p>\n
For the first time, she wasn\u2019t trying to justify herself.<\/p>\n
Susan told me that as the years passed, the shame she felt every time she looked at me became heavier than the secret itself.<\/p>\n
When Michael became sick, she had decided to tell me immediately.<\/p>\n
But Michael asked her to wait.<\/p>\n
He was afraid of spending the final months of his lsife watching our family fall apart.<\/p>\n
And Susan agreed.s<\/p>\n
Once again, they had made the decision for me.<\/p>\n
I stood up and opened the hotel room door.<\/p>\n
Susan understood.<\/p>\n
She stood as well.<\/p>\n
When she reached the door, she turned toward me.<\/p>\n
\u201cYesterday I said it would be our last picture as friends because I knew that after today, you would never call me your friend again.\u201d<\/p>\n
I looked at her.<\/p>\n
Thirty-seven years of memories passed through my mind.<\/p>\n
Two little girls in a schoolyard.<\/p>\n
Our first school dance.<\/p>\n
My wedding.<\/p>\n
The birth of my children.<\/p>\n
My mother\u2019s funeral.<\/p>\n
Michael\u2019s last night in the hospital.<\/p>\n
And Susan was present in every one of those memories.<\/p>\n
But now every memory seemed to have two different versions.<\/p>\n
The one I had known.<\/p>\n
And the one that had really happened.<\/p>\n
I said only one thing:<\/p>\n
\u201cYou were right. That was our last picture.\u201d<\/p>\n
She left.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s been six months since that day.<\/p>\n
We haven\u2019t spoken.<\/p>\n
She sent me two letters.<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t answer either one.<\/p>\n
But the strangest thing is that I still haven\u2019t deleted our last photograph.<\/p>\n
Sometimes I open it and stare at our smiling faces for a long time.<\/p>\n
In that photograph, I am still the woman who believes that the person beside her is the most loyal friend she has ever had.<\/p>\n
And Susan already knows that, within just a few hours, that entire life is going to change.<\/p>\n
Sometimes people ask me if I can ever forgive her.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t have an answer yet.<\/p>\n
Because betrayal isn\u2019t only about discovering that your best friend had an affair with your husband.<\/p>\n
For me, the most painful part was something else.s<\/p>\n
For twelve years, every single day, they both had the opportunity to tell me the truth.<\/p>\n
And for twelve years, every single day, they both chose to remain silent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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