She knew what “wife” meant to me.
So she delayed it.
Every year I waited made telling you harder.
She knew what “wife” meant to me.
I lowered the letter and found one more page beneath the papers.
Robert,
I can marry you now. That’s the sentence I should be happy to write, but first I have to tell you why I couldn’t before.
Nothing followed.
***
That afternoon, Penelope found me on the bed with the letter in my hand.
“I can marry you now.”
“She tried to tell me.”
Penelope sat beside me. “And then she stopped for 46 years.”
She glanced at the page. “That doesn’t erase what she did.”
“No.”
“But she was afraid.”
“So was I plenty of times.”
“She tried to tell me.”
Penelope looked at me.
“You still told her things.”
I picked up the letter.
“She loved me.”
Penelope nodded. “And she still
kept this from you.”
“Both are true, sweetheart. But it doesn’t help me right now…”
“She loved me.”
***
That night, I took off my wedding ring and placed it beside Irene’s.
I stared at the two rings, then turned our wedding photograph facedown.
I no longer doubted that Irene had loved me.
I just didn’t know what that love could carry.
***
The next morning, I stopped trying to understand Irene and started deciding what I was going to do with what she’d left me.
I just didn’t know what that love could carry.
I called Mr. Geller.
“Did she ask you to make me forgive her?”
“No.”
“What did she ask you to do?”
“Give you the truth after she was gone.”
I looked at Irene’s unfinished letter.
I called Mr. Geller.
“Then she waited until the one time in 60 years I couldn’t ask her a single question.”
