I didn't ask Wendell about the photographs again right away.<\/p>\n
That surprised me.<\/p>\n
A few weeks earlier, I would have brought them up every time we spoke, hoping one question might lead to another until I finally understood everything.<\/p>\n
But something had changed after our conversation in the garage.<\/p>\n
I no longer felt that I had to force the truth out of him.<\/p>\n
I wanted him to offer it willingly.<\/p>\n
There was a difference, and I was beginning to understand why it mattered.<\/p>\n
We continued seeing each other as we had before.<\/p>\n
We talked about ordinary things.<\/p>\n
We laughed when something struck us as funny.<\/p>\n
Sometimes we sat together without saying much, and I found that I enjoyed those moments more than I expected.<\/p>\n
I had spent so long wondering whether Wendell was keeping me at a distance that I hadn't fully appreciated the ways he was already letting me close.<\/p>\n
He remembered things I mentioned in passing.<\/p>\n
He noticed when my mood changed.<\/p>\n
He never treated my grief as something I should have finished dealing with by now.<\/p>\n
Those things mattered.<\/p>\n
I wasn't going to pretend they didn't just because he had handled one part of our relationship badly.<\/p>\n
But I wasn't going to pretend that part didn't matter either.<\/p>\n
Both truths had to stay with me.<\/p>\n
One afternoon, I caught myself thinking about the blue tape on the yellow paper.<\/p>\n
It was a ridiculous detail to remember.<\/p>\n
I could have forgotten the color of the wall or the position of the workbench.<\/p>\n
Instead, I kept picturing those two strips holding the message in place.<\/p>\n
For my Winnie.<\/p>\n
The words had been written simply.<\/p>\n
There was no long explanation underneath them.<\/p>\n
No declaration meant to impress anybody.<\/p>\n
Just a few words, followed by a date.<\/p>\n
I wondered how long Wendell had been looking at them.<\/p>\n
I wondered whether he had read them to himself when he was alone.<\/p>\n
I wondered whether he had ever considered taking them down.<\/p>\n
I couldn't answer any of those questions.<\/p>\n
And, for once, I let them remain unanswered.<\/p>\n
I had learned that curiosity did not give me permission to invent a whole story around what I didn't know.<\/p>\n
If Wendell wanted me to understand the message, he would have to tell me what it meant.<\/p>\n
Until then, I could appreciate what I had actually seen.<\/p>\n
He had written something for me.<\/p>\n
He had kept it where he could see it.<\/p>\n
And he had been frightened when he realized I had found it before he was ready.<\/p>\n
Those facts were enough for now.<\/p>\n
They didn't tell me everything.<\/p>\n
They did tell me that my first assumption might have been wrong.<\/p>\n
I had believed his closed door meant he didn't want me in his life.<\/p>\n
Perhaps he had been trying to prepare a part of that life for me.<\/p>\n
If so, his way of doing it had caused unnecessary hurt.<\/p>\n
But the intention mattered too.<\/p>\n
I wanted to be fair.<\/p>\n
I also wanted to be careful.<\/p>\n
I had spent years learning the difference between kindness and trust.<\/p>\n
Kindness could be offered in a moment.<\/p>\n
Trust had to be built over time.<\/p>\n
Wendell had been kind to me from the beginning.<\/p>\n
Now I needed to see whether we could build the other thing.<\/p>\n
I didn't make a formal decision about it.<\/p>\n
I simply began paying attention to what happened next.<\/p>\n
When we spoke about our days, I noticed whether he answered my questions directly.<\/p>\n
When he mentioned something he was working on, I listened without immediately asking whether it had anything to do with his house.<\/p>\n
When he became quiet, I tried not to assume that his silence meant something bad.<\/p>\n
It wasn't always easy.<\/p>\n
Sometimes my mind returned to the months when I had been left guessing.<\/p>\n
I would remember how often I had gone home wondering whether I was being unreasonable.<\/p>\n
Then I would remind myself that I had finally told him how I felt.<\/p>\n
He had listened.<\/p>\n
Now I had to give him a chance to show me whether he understood.<\/p>\n
That was not the same as forgetting.<\/p>\n
It was a decision to move forward without dragging every old question into every new conversation.<\/p>\n
I hoped Wendell would do the same.<\/p>\n
One evening, we talked about Christmas again.<\/p>\n
The subject no longer felt as mysterious as it had before.<\/p>\n
It still carried a certain weight, but I didn't feel the same anxiety when the date came up.<\/p>\n
Wendell asked whether I had thought about what I wanted to do.<\/p>\n
I told him I hadn't made any firm plans.<\/p>\n
He nodded thoughtfully.<\/p>\n
I waited for him to say more.<\/p>\n
He looked as though he might.<\/p>\n
Then he stopped and smiled at me.<\/p>\n
"What?" I asked.<\/p>\n
"Nothing."<\/p>\n
I raised an eyebrow.<\/p>\n
He laughed softly.<\/p>\n
"That's not a very convincing answer," I told him.<\/p>\n
"No," he admitted. "It isn't."<\/p>\n
I smiled, but I didn't press him.<\/p>\n
The old version of me would have spent the rest of the evening wondering what he had almost said.<\/p>\n
This time, I let the conversation move on.<\/p>\n
It felt good not to chase every unfinished sentence.<\/p>\n
I was learning that patience could be a choice rather than a surrender.<\/p>\n
There were still moments when I wished he would simply tell me everything.<\/p>\n
I wasn't going to pretend otherwise.<\/p>\n
But I no longer wanted to discover the truth by accident.<\/p>\n
I wanted to be included in the telling.<\/p>\n
That was what I had asked for.<\/p>\n
And that was what I intended to keep asking for, if necessary.<\/p>\n
Later, when I was alone, I thought about how strange it was that a relationship could make a person feel both wanted and uncertain.<\/p>\n
Wendell had made me feel wanted in many ways.<\/p>\n
He had also left me wondering where I stood.<\/p>\n
Neither feeling canceled out the other.<\/p>\n
I had to decide whether we could build something honest from that point.<\/p>\n
I didn't know yet.<\/p>\n
But I was no longer willing to let fear make the decision for me.<\/p>\n
I didn't ask Wendell about the photographs again right away. That surprised me. A few weeks earlier, I would have brought them up every time we spoke, hoping one question … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36506,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-insightdrama"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36515"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36515\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36535,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36515\/revisions\/36535"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/36506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}