“I’m asking you.”
“And I’m telling you to read what your wife wrote before she left this house.”
Before she left.
The phrase made no sense. Lauren could not leave without help. She could barely stand without me supporting her on one side. The idea of her simply leaving the house while I was away felt like a cruel trick.
I lowered my eyes to the envelope.
My name looked the way it always had in her handwriting—careful, slanted slightly to the right, the letters pressed firmly into the paper. She used to leave notes on the refrigerator for me before the accident. Don’t forget your presentation folder. I made soup for dinner. Good luck today. Love, L.
There had been a time when coming home to her handwriting made me smile.
Now it felt like a hand closing around my throat.
I pulled out the folded pages. There were three of them.
The first line blurred before I could read it.
Marcus,
By the time you find this, I will already be somewhere you cannot reach me by walking down the hall and saying my name.
I stopped.
My hand shook once, hard enough to rattle the paper.
Daniel said nothing.
I forced myself to continue.
I waited for you for two days before I understood you were not coming home early. I waited through the third day because I told myself you must have been delayed, busy, overwhelmed, anything other than the truth my heart already knew.
On the fourth day, I stopped waiting.
Not because I stopped loving you.
Because I finally understood that loving you had become a place where I disappeared.
I closed my eyes.
The house was silent except for the faint hum of the refrigerator.
“She wrote that when?” I asked.
“Keep reading,” Daniel said.
I looked back down.
