“I know.”
I reached for the envelope.
My fingers trembled.
“Have you read it?”
“No.”
“How do I know that?”
“You don’t.”
That answer was the first thing he said all evening that made me trust him a little.
I opened the envelope.
The letter inside was only two pages.
Michael had written it 20 years earlier.
He told me about Ruth.
Not every detail.
Enough.
He wrote that he had confused escape with love.
That Ruth made him feel like a man without bills, routines, or responsibilities.
He said he ended it because he realized the life he wanted to escape was also the life he would choose if forced to lose it.
Near the end, he wrote:
“Eleanor, I don’t know whether telling you would free you or only move my guilt into your hands.”
I stopped reading.
That was exactly what he had done.
He kept the truth to protect himself, then dressed the silence as concern for me.
