Instead, I started deciding what I would do with what she had left behind.
I called Mr. Geller.
“Did she ask you to make me forgive her?”
“No.”
“What did she ask?”
“To give you the truth after she was gone.”
I laughed once, without humor.
“So she waited until the only moment in sixty years when I couldn’t ask her anything.”
Later, he told me Irene’s grave marker still needed my approval.
The draft inscription read:
Beloved Wife.
At first, I told them to remove the word Wife.
Then I sat with it.
Days later, Penelope came with me to finalize the inscription.
She stood quietly beside me.
I stared at those two words.
Beloved Wife.
I thought about the courthouse Irene could have taken me to forty-six years earlier.
One afternoon.
A few signatures.
A painful conversation.
A truth we could have faced together.
Instead, she carried it until she was too frightened to confess it.
