I could hear the minister speaking, but his voice sounded far away. My heart was pounding so hard I could feel it in my throat.
I didn’t understand what was going on, but I knew one thing with perfect clarity. I fixed my gaze on the casket.
I was never supposed to see this while Arthur was alive.
After the burial, the church hall filled with the low murmur of sympathy. “Arthur was the most loyal man I ever knew.”
“He adored you, Helen.”
I stood near the coffee urn and scanned every corner of the room for the young woman, but she was gone. My sister-in-law, Margaret, approached me.
“You’re holding up remarkably well,” she said, squeezing my forearm.
I looked at her for a long moment, then opened the wallet just enough for her to see the edge of the photograph. Her eyes flicked down.
She stiffened. “You’ve seen this before?” I asked.
“Margaret.”
“You shouldn’t be looking through things like that today.”
I moved closer.
“Who is the baby?”
She looked over my shoulder, anywhere but at me. “Not today.”
She lowered her voice. “Please, Helen.”
Then she walked away.
Margaret knew something, and I couldn’t wait for her to decide when to tell me about the baby and Arthur.
I needed to know now. I waited until people had started leaving.
My daughter Ruth was loading platters into her car, and my son Daniel was outside speaking to a cousin. I slipped into the restroom and shut myself in a stall, then I opened the wallet again.
I set the photo on my lap, placed the key on top of it, and then started checking every pocket and fold.
I quickly found something I’d missed the first time. A paper was tucked into one of the card pockets. I unfolded it carefully, but I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw what it was.
I looked at the key, then I looked at the paper again.
It was a property tax receipt. The name at the top was Arthur’s, but the address was not for our house.
“No,” I said softly. “No.
No, Arthur… what did you do?”
I packed everything back into the wallet and walked out.
I didn’t tell anyone I was leaving, or where I was going. I got in my car and drove to the address on the receipt. It brought me to a one-story home with white siding and green shutters.
The flowerbeds had been weeded recently.
Somebody cared for the place. I walked up to the front door and knocked.
The girl from the funeral answered the door. “You came,” she said.
“Who are you?” I asked.
She glanced down the hallway behind her. “You should come in.”
“Answer me.”
Her chin trembled. “This was my grandmother’s house.”
“I know, I just… now you’re here, I don’t know the right words to say it.”
“I don’t need the right words, just the truth.
How are you connected to Arthur?”
“My mother was his daughter.”
My knees felt weak.
I grabbed the doorframe. “I’m sorry.
I didn’t want to tell you like this.” Her eyes filled. “He helped us.
He didn’t abandon us.
He just couldn’t—”
“Couldn’t what?” I said sharply. “Couldn’t tell his wife he had another family?”
She flinched, then nodded once. “He said it would destroy everything.”
She moved aside.
“Please, come in.
You should hear the full story.”
The living room was full of framed photos, and Arthur was in many of them. Arthur, in a suit, standing stiffly beside a dark-haired woman with his eyes.
Arthur at a high school graduation. Arthur, older, grayer, holding the shoulders of two children who were grinning at the camera.
This was the life he’d kept from me.
I walked to the nearest photo and touched the glass with one finger. “That was my mother,” the young woman said quietly. “She died three years ago.”
I turned.
“How old was she?”
“Fifty-four.”
I did the math.
The answer came fast and ugly. She was conceived the year after Arthur and I were married.
I closed my eyes. “He paid for the house,” she said.
“Taxes.
Repairs. The roof when it started leaking. He came when he could.”
She hesitated.
“A few times a month when I was younger.
Less later. Never enough.”
A few times a month.
