The hotel key had come from his visit to our honeymoon room.
He’d wanted to make sure it still looked familiar.
The jewelry receipt represented the final payment for our new rings.
Carol at the café hadn’t been hiding an affair.
She knew Mark was ill.
And she’d helped arrange the ceremony.
I had interpreted every clue incorrectly.
I cried until my chest hurt.
Because my husband was sick.
Because he’d kept it secret.
Because he loved me enough to plan a second wedding while he still remembered the first.
And because suddenly, the future we’d always imagined together felt painfully uncertain.
But the worst moment was still ahead.
The Phone Call
About an hour later, my phone rang.
Mark.
He almost never called from a construction site.
The machinery was usually too loud.
I answered immediately.
“Mark?”
Silence.
Then I heard traffic.
Wind.
The rumble of a passing truck.
