Uncle John’s House
Bob and I had been married for eleven years when I found out that Uncle John had been dead for ten of them.
I want to tell this story carefully because the truth of it is more complicated than the version that fits neatly into a story about betrayal, and because I owe myself, at minimum, accuracy. I have spent enough of my life accepting simplified versions of things.
We met in our late thirties, Bob and I. Neither of us had been married before, which was unusual enough that people commented on it—always with the slightly probing quality of people who want to understand why, who suspect there must be a reason, as if choosing carefully before committing is a failure of some kind. He was a civil engineer who built bridges for the county transportation department. I was a high school English teacher who had spent fifteen years helping teenagers understand that words mean things and that precision matters.
The irony of that last part is not lost on me.
We had what looked, from outside, like a solid marriage. The neighbors envied us—I know because Pam next door told me once, directly, that she and her husband talked about us as an example of how it was supposed to work. We had Sunday breakfasts that lasted two hours. We had a system for disagreements that involved cooling-off periods and actual listening. We traveled somewhere new every year in October, which was our anniversary month.
The trips were nice. I kept thinking that during them—we’re having a nice time—and believing that nice was the foundation rather than the surface.
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
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