“And later?”
“Later, I stayed because I had built a life. Elaine deserved honesty, not a husband forever comparing her to a woman he had lost.”
“You could have told me the truth without asking me to choose you.”
“Yes.”
His eyes filled with tears.
“That is the part I regret most. I treated your right to know as though it were a temptation I had to resist.”
I opened the envelope.
The letter inside was dated three weeks earlier.
Hannah,
If you are reading this, then you came to the hospital after all these years, and I have already failed at least once more by asking you to discover the truth instead of telling you myself.
I smiled despite the ache in my throat.
The letter continued.
I loved Elaine. I loved the life we made, and I loved our children. Nothing about loving you erases that. I have spent years afraid that any truth about us would dishonor her, but Elaine knew me better than I knew myself. She told me that a life built on silence was not the same as a life built on loyalty.
