I had spent three years believing my wife had stopped loving me.<\/p>\n
That belief had helped me get through the divorce.<\/p>\n
It had also been wrong.<\/p>\n
I didn't know that when I stood outside Sarah's hospital room with a letter in my hands.<\/p>\n
I only knew that the woman I had loved for twenty years was somewhere beyond that door.<\/p>\n
And someone had just told me she had been sick before she left me.<\/p>\n
I looked at Jessica, the hospital employee standing beside me.<\/p>\n
She had been answering my questions carefully.<\/p>\n
Until that moment, I thought she was simply trying to help me understand Sarah's condition.<\/p>\n
Then she mentioned chemotherapy.<\/p>\n
I stared at her.<\/p>\n
"What treatment?"<\/p>\n
Jessica looked surprised.<\/p>\n
She had assumed I already knew.<\/p>\n
That was clear from her face.<\/p>\n
"Sarah was receiving cancer treatment before your marriage ended," she said.<\/p>\n
I didn't answer.<\/p>\n
For a moment, I couldn't even remember what question I had been about to ask.<\/p>\n
Before our marriage ended.<\/p>\n
Those words didn't fit with anything Sarah had told me.<\/p>\n
Our divorce had been finalized three years earlier.<\/p>\n
I remembered the paperwork.<\/p>\n
I remembered how little Sarah had said when we were separating.<\/p>\n
And I remembered the way she had looked at me when she told me we couldn't stay married.<\/p>\n
But I didn't remember cancer.<\/p>\n
I didn't remember chemotherapy.<\/p>\n
I didn't remember any explanation that even came close.<\/p>\n
"Are you sure?" I asked.<\/p>\n
Jessica nodded.<\/p>\n
"Her first major operation at this hospital was almost four years ago."<\/p>\n
I looked down at the floor.<\/p>\n
Four years.<\/p>\n
I had been married to Sarah when that happened.<\/p>\n
We had still been living our lives as husband and wife.<\/p>\n
Or at least I had believed we were.<\/p>\n
I put one hand against the wall.<\/p>\n
The hallway was quiet.<\/p>\n
Somewhere farther away, I could hear someone speaking, but I couldn't make out the words.<\/p>\n
Jessica waited.<\/p>\n
I think she understood that I needed a moment.<\/p>\n
I was trying to put two dates together.<\/p>\n
They kept coming apart in my head.<\/p>\n
"Four years ago?" I asked again.<\/p>\n
"Yes."<\/p>\n
"But we divorced three years ago."<\/p>\n
"I understand."<\/p>\n
"No. I don't think you do."<\/p>\n
My voice came out sharper than I intended.<\/p>\n
Jessica didn't react.<\/p>\n
I felt embarrassed almost immediately.<\/p>\n
She hadn't caused any of this.<\/p>\n
She was the first person who had told me the truth.<\/p>\n
"I'm sorry," I said.<\/p>\n
"It's all right."<\/p>\n
I looked toward Sarah's room.<\/p>\n
"She was already sick when she asked me to leave?"<\/p>\n
Jessica gave a small nod.<\/p>\n
I couldn't believe it.<\/p>\n
Not because Sarah had been incapable of keeping something from me.<\/p>\n
She had proved that she could.<\/p>\n
But because the thing she had hidden was so large.<\/p>\n
An illness.<\/p>\n
Surgery.<\/p>\n
Treatment that had apparently been going on while I still called her my wife.<\/p>\n
I tried to remember whether I had noticed anything.<\/p>\n
I could remember arguments about our marriage.<\/p>\n
I could remember her becoming distant.<\/p>\n
I could remember asking what I had done wrong.<\/p>\n
But all those memories had been shaped by the explanation I believed.<\/p>\n
Sarah wanted out.<\/p>\n
Sarah no longer wanted the marriage.<\/p>\n
Sarah had decided that twenty years together were enough.<\/p>\n
Now I had to look at those same memories again.<\/p>\n
I wasn't ready.<\/p>\n
"Why didn't she tell me?" I asked.<\/p>\n
Jessica looked uncomfortable.<\/p>\n
"I can't answer everything for her."<\/p>\n
"Did she tell anybody?"<\/p>\n
"I can tell you what she shared with the counseling staff."<\/p>\n
I looked at her.<\/p>\n
"She spoke to counselors?"<\/p>\n
"Yes."<\/p>\n
I thought about the months surrounding our divorce.<\/p>\n
Sarah had been carrying something I hadn't understood.<\/p>\n
And I had spent three years resenting her for leaving me without an explanation I could accept.<\/p>\n
I felt sick.<\/p>\n
"She let me believe she didn't want me anymore."<\/p>\n
Jessica lowered her eyes.<\/p>\n
I didn't expect her to defend Sarah.<\/p>\n
I didn't want her to condemn her either.<\/p>\n
I wanted someone to tell me there had been a mistake.<\/p>\n
That another patient's records had been confused with Sarah's.<\/p>\n
That I had misunderstood the dates.<\/p>\n
Anything.<\/p>\n
But Jessica reached for a folder.<\/p>\n
It was made of ordinary brown paper.<\/p>\n
Nothing about it looked important.<\/p>\n
She opened it and took out an envelope.<\/p>\n
Then she held it toward me.<\/p>\n
"Sarah asked us to keep this for you."<\/p>\n
I didn't take it.<\/p>\n
Not immediately.<\/p>\n
I was looking at the name written across the front.<\/p>\n
David.<\/p>\n
Sarah's handwriting.<\/p>\n
I knew the shape of that D.<\/p>\n
I knew how she finished the last letter.<\/p>\n
Twenty years of grocery notes, birthday cards, and messages left around the house had made her handwriting as familiar to me as my own.<\/p>\n
I hadn't expected seeing it to hurt.<\/p>\n
It did.<\/p>\n
"What's this?" I asked.<\/p>\n
"A letter."<\/p>\n
"From Sarah?"<\/p>\n
"Yes."<\/p>\n
"Why do you have it?"<\/p>\n
"She left instructions that it should be given to you if you came looking for her."<\/p>\n
I looked at the envelope again.<\/p>\n
Then I noticed the date.<\/p>\n
It had been written during the same week Sarah told me she wanted a divorce.<\/p>\n
I remembered that week.<\/p>\n
I remembered sitting with her on the porch swing.<\/p>\n
I remembered believing that she was trying to find a gentle way to tell me I wasn't enough.<\/p>\n
Now there was a letter from that same week.<\/p>\n
A letter she had never given me.<\/p>\n
"How long has this been here?"<\/p>\n
"Three years," Jessica said.<\/p>\n
I finally took it.<\/p>\n
My fingers closed around the paper.<\/p>\n
It was lighter than I expected.<\/p>\n
"She kept this all that time?"<\/p>\n
Jessica nodded.<\/p>\n
"She made sure it stayed with her hospital records whenever she was admitted."<\/p>\n
I stared at her.<\/p>\n
"Every time?"<\/p>\n
"Yes."<\/p>\n
I thought about Sarah bringing that envelope back with her.<\/p>\n
Again.<\/p>\n
And again.<\/p>\n
Not sending it.<\/p>\n
Not throwing it away.<\/p>\n
Just making certain it remained somewhere I might find it.<\/p>\n
I had spent three years thinking she wanted to erase me from her life.<\/p>\n
Yet she had written my name on an envelope and kept it close through every hospital admission.<\/p>\n
"Why would she do that?" I asked.<\/p>\n
Jessica took a moment before answering.<\/p>\n
"Whenever your name was mentioned during admission, she became very upset."<\/p>\n
"Upset how?"<\/p>\n
"She cried."<\/p>\n
I looked away.<\/p>\n
I didn't want Jessica watching my face.<\/p>\n
I was already having trouble keeping myself together.<\/p>\n
Sarah had cried about me.<\/p>\n
I didn't understand how that could be true.<\/p>\n
I remembered her face during our separation.<\/p>\n
She had tried so hard to sound certain.<\/p>\n
She had said we needed to move on.<\/p>\n
She had said I deserved something different.<\/p>\n
And I had believed that certainty meant she had stopped caring.<\/p>\n
Maybe I had never understood her at all.<\/p>\n
I turned the envelope over.<\/p>\n
It was sealed.<\/p>\n
Sarah had written something to me before we divorced.<\/p>\n
Then she had carried those words through three years of treatment without allowing me to read them.<\/p>\n
I felt angry.<\/p>\n
I felt frightened.<\/p>\n
More than anything, I felt ashamed of how quickly I had accepted the worst explanation of her leaving.<\/p>\n
There were still questions I couldn't answer.<\/p>\n
I didn't know what Sarah had wanted me to understand.<\/p>\n
I didn't know why she had chosen silence.<\/p>\n
But I knew something I hadn't known when I walked into that hospital.<\/p>\n
Our divorce had not begun with the loss of her love.<\/p>\n
It had begun with an illness she had hidden from me.<\/p>\n
I looked at Jessica.<\/p>\n
"Did she know I might come here one day?"<\/p>\n
"I think she hoped you would have the chance to read it."<\/p>\n
I pressed my thumb against the sealed edge.<\/p>\n
For three years, I had wanted Sarah to explain herself.<\/p>\n
Now her explanation was in my hands.<\/p>\n
And I was afraid to open it.<\/p>\n
I had spent three years believing my wife had stopped loving me. That belief had helped me get through the divorce. It had also been wrong. I didn't know that … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36547,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36548","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\/36548","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=36548"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36548\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36568,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36548\/revisions\/36568"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/36547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}