Rebecca reached across the table and took my hand.
“So have I.”
For the first time since Carol died, I no longer felt as though I were carrying her secret alone. There would still be grief ahead for all of us, but at least that grief would belong to the truth rather than another carefully maintained lie.
I returned home later that evening and sat alone in the house Carol and I had shared for decades. Her reading glasses were still beside the recliner, and the unfinished crossword remained exactly where she had left it, reminders that discovering what she had hidden did not erase the life we had actually lived together.
That was the hardest part to understand. Carol had deceived me about something enormous, yet she had also been the woman who raised Rebecca beside me, sat through school concerts, cared for me when I was sick, and shared thirty-six years of ordinary life.
