“No,” he said. “You weren’t. Not in the way you’re thinking. She loved you in a different way. She loved you like someone loves a home. Like someone loves a future.”
I stared at the box.
“Then why did she keep you?” I asked.
Jack’s face tightened.
“Because she was afraid of what you’d do if you knew,” he said. “She was afraid you’d leave. She was afraid you’d stop loving her. She was afraid you’d think she was unfaithful.”
I felt a strange anger rise in me again—not at her, but at the way she had suffered in silence.
“She didn’t need to be afraid,” I said, though I wasn’t sure who I was defending her from.
Jack looked at me for a long moment.
“She was afraid,” he said softly. “And she was right to be.”
That night, I went home and sat at the kitchen table with the letters spread out in front of me like a confession.
I read them all.
There were letters from Lauren to Jack, written when they were young. There were letters from Lauren to me, written before we met. There were letters she had written to herself, as if she were trying to understand her own heart.
And there were letters written in the last months of her life, letters she never sent.
One of them was addressed to me.
In it, she wrote:
I want you to know that I chose you.
Not because you were easy. Not because you were safe.
But because you made me feel like I could be honest.
You made me feel like I could be myself.
And that’s why I love you.
But I’m still scared.
I’m scared you’ll leave when you find out about Jack.
I’m scared you’ll think I didn’t love you.
I hope you don’t.
I hope you understand.
If you’re angry, I understand.
But please don’t hate me.
Love,
Lauren
I sat there for a long time, letting the words settle.
I wasn’t angry, not in the way she expected. I wasn’t even sure what I felt.
But I felt something.
A sense of grief that was different from the grief of losing her.Take Psychology Courses
A grief for the truth I hadn’t known.
A grief for the life she had lived without me.
A grief for the love that had been too big to fit into one person.
The next week, I went back to the cemetery.
The helmet was still there, where Jack had placed it.
I sat down beside the headstone and waited.
I didn’t have to wait long.
Jack arrived soon after, his bike rumbling into the distance like a heartbeat.
He got off and walked to the grave.
“Hey,” I said.
He nodded.
“You didn’t have to come,” I said, though I wasn’t sure who I was speaking to—him or myself.Find Grief Counseling
Jack shrugged.
“She asked me to,” he said again. “And she asked me to make sure you were okay.”
