All thirty-six.
Some made me laugh.
Some made me furious.
One made me throw a pillow across the room.
One contained a confession that he had secretly hated my meatloaf for twenty-two years.
I nearly dug him up just to argue.
But another letter became my favorite.
He wrote it on our twentieth anniversary.
Maggie,
If you ever discover everything I have hidden from you, I’m afraid you will decide our marriage was built on lies.
It wasn’t.
The lies were rooms I locked because I was ashamed.
But the house itself was real.
I read that line many times.
The house itself was real.
That was how I finally made peace with him.
Not by forgiving everything.
Not by pretending his secrecy hadn’t hurt people.
But by accepting that a person can fail you and still have loved you profoundly.
Daniel and I did not immediately become a couple.
