I covered my mouth.
For a while, that was as far as I got.
Then I read again.
Mark explained why he had asked the doctor to keep the letter from me.
He knew I would have tried to read it while he was still alive.
He knew I would have treated every sentence like another goodbye.
He knew I might spend his remaining days watching him disappear instead of simply being beside him.
He didn’t want that.
He wanted our last weeks to belong to us, not to a letter written for afterward.
That was why he had met privately with the doctor.
That was why he had refused to tell me more.
That was why he had asked me to trust him when secrecy was the last thing either of us wanted between us.
I kept reading.
The letter was not really about dying.
It was about our daughter.
