Chapter 3: What the Letter Said
Ethan let the phone ring out.
He set it face-down on the nightstand and stood there with both hands pressed flat against the wood, not moving.
"Ethan."
"Give me a second."
"You don't get a second.
Not tonight." I stood up from the bed.
"Who was that?"
He turned around slowly.
Whatever composure he'd been holding onto since the wedding, it was g0ne now.
His face looked like a man standing at the edge of something he couldn't take back.
"Her name is Diane," he said.
"She was Michael's first wife."
The room tilted.
"His — what?"
"Before you.
Before any of this." Ethan pulled out the chair from the small desk in the corner and sat down heavily.
"They were married for two years.
They were very young.
It ended badly."
"Michael was never married before me." My voice came out flat.
"I would have known."
"He made sure you wouldn't."
I looked down at the letter still in my hand.
Michael's handwriting.
The loops of his lowercase letters, the way he always pressed too hard with the pen.
I had read his grocery lists and birthday cards and the notes he tucked into the children's lunchboxes for fifteen years.
I knew this handwriting better than my own.
"Keep reading," Ethan said quietly.
I looked back at the page.
*"I was not the man you deserved when I was young.
I did things I am not proud of.
Ethan knows what I did.
He was there.
He helped me walk away from a situation I should have faced like a man, and he has carried that weight alongside me ever since.
I asked him to marry you because I trust no one else on this earth to protect you and our children if the past ever finds its way back.
And I am afraid that it will."*
I set the letter down on the bed.
"What did he do, Ethan?"
Ethan looked at his hands.
"Michael and Diane — when they split, it wasn't clean.
There was money involved.
Her family's money.
Michael was young and he was desperate and he made a decision that he spent the rest of his life trying to make right."
"What decision?"
"He took it." Ethan looked up.
"Not all of it.
But enough.
He was twenty-three.
He told himself he'd pay it back.
He never did."
The silence between us stretched long enough that I could hear the house settling around us.
Down the hall, one of the children shifted in their sleep.
A floorboard creaked.
The ordinary sounds of a life I had believed in completely.
"So Diane has been out there this whole time," I said slowly.
"Knowing what he did.
And now Michael is g0ne, and she's calling you."
"Yes."
"What does she want?"
Ethan's jaw tightened.
"I don't know yet.
But she doesn't call unless she wants something.
She never has."
I picked the letter back up.
There was more.
I had stopped reading too soon.
*"If Diane ever contacts Ethan, do not let her near the children.
She is not what she appears.
I learned that too late.
There are things about her that I never told anyone — not even Ethan — because I was ashamed of how I found out.
Those things are in the second envelope.
Do not open it unless you have no other choice."*
I looked up.
"What second envelope?"
Ethan's expression shifted.
Something crossed his face — not surprise.
Recognition.
He reached back into his jacket pocket and placed a small sealed envelope on the bed between us.
"He gave me both," Ethan said.
"He told me to hold onto the second one until you needed it.
I didn't know what was inside.
I still don't."
I stared at it.
My name was written on the front in Michael's hand.
Just my name.
Nothing else.
"He planned all of this," I said.
"He was trying to protect you.
Even from the grave, he was trying to protect you."
I reached for the envelope.
Then Ethan's phone lit up again on the nightstand.
Face-down, but the edges of the screen glowed white against the wood.
This time it wasn't a call.
It was a text message.
I could see the first line of the preview from where I was sitting.
*"I know she's reading the letter right now.
May you like
Tell her I just want to talk.
Tell her I'm not the one she should be afraid of."*
