Chapter 6: The Letters
The first thing I saw were envelopes.
Dozens of them. All addressed to me in Evelyn’s handwriting. Some were dated from the first few months of our marriage. Others were written only weeks before she died.
I picked one up with trembling fingers and opened it.
Dear Caleb,
You smiled today while you were fixing the kitchen sink. It was small, but it was real. I haven’t seen you smile like that in a while. I hope one day you’ll smile like that more often.
— Evelyn
I read another.
Dear Caleb,
I know you’re only here because you have nowhere else to go. I know you’re waiting for me to die. I wish I could be angry about it, but I’m not. I just wish you would let me take care of you while I still can.
— Evelyn
Letter after letter.
She had known everything from the very beginning.
She knew I didn’t love her. She knew I was waiting for her to die. She knew I was only playing the role of a husband. And still, she had chosen to write to me every week. She wrote about the small things — the way I sometimes smiled when I thought no one was looking, how she wished I would let her take care of me, and how she hoped that one day I would understand what real love actually looked like.
I read until my eyes blurred.
At the very bottom of the box was one final envelope. It was sealed. On the front, in her delicate handwriting, were four simple words:
For when you’re ready.
I couldn’t open it.
Not yet.
I sat on the floor of the lawyer’s office with letters scattered around me and cried for the first time in years. Not because I had lost the money or the house.
But because I had finally understood what I had actually lost.
She had loved me.
May you like
Quietly. Patiently. Without conditions.
And I had been too selfish and too blind to see it.
