I stole a choice from you.
I can’t give you back those years.
So my last wish is not to be forgiven.
My last wish is that you can finally make the decision that I took from you.
Find Susan.
Listen to the truth.
And if life gives you even if it’s one more chance to be happy, please don’t waste it because of me.
Linda.
When I finished reading, I was crying.
Not in silence.
I covered my face with both hands and cried for the woman I had lost and for the young man I once went.
By Susan.
By Linda.
For all that could have happened.
And for all that happened.
Susan didn’t touch me.
She just sat there and let me cry.
After a long time, I asked the question I was almost afraid to ask.
Have you ever married?
Susan smiled sadly.
“Yes.
My heart sank for reasons that I didn’t fully understand.
“He was a good man,” he said. We spent twenty-eight years together. He died six years ago.
I looked at her.
“So, did you have a good life?”
“Yes.
That response gave me a strange sense of relief.
Neither of them had spent forty years frozen in the past.
Life had continued.
In a different way than we once imagined it.
But it had continued.
That day I stayed at Susan’s house for almost five hours.
We talked about college.
From the separated years.
Of our spouses.
Of our children.
Of the people we had become.
When I finally got up to leave, Susan walked me to the door.
“I don’t know what will happen now,” I said.
She smiled.
“Me neither.
For the first time all day, I smiled too.
Six months later, Susan and I continue to talk almost every day.
Sometimes we stay for coffee.
Sometimes we just sit down and talk about the strange paths that life took us through.
I don’t know what to call what we have now.
Maybe friendship.
Maybe something that still doesn’t need a name.
But I finally went to visit Linda’s grave.
I stayed there for a long time with his letter in my hand.
He was still hurt.
A part of me will probably always be.
But after thirty-six years together, I also knew something more.
A terrible decision didn’t erase all the good years that came after.
