And now he didn’t know what to believe. Had their life been a lie? Had she ever really chosen him? Or had he only ever been an escape, a refuge, a way out of a life she did not want? He had spent his whole life fighting to be seen as a man, in a world that called him less than. That told him he was never enough. And now, even in the place he had called home, even in the arms of the woman he had loved, he questioned whether he had ever truly belonged.
The letters were still there. The ones from her father, yellowed with age, tucked away in the drawer where she had hidden them. The threats, the warnings. And then the last one, the one that had shattered her in those final weeks. “I know who you are.” A different handwriting. A different fear. She had never told him what it meant, but now he had to know.
He opened the drawer, his fingers shaking as he pulled out the stack of old papers, unfolding them one by one. The last letter was brief, a single sentence. “Your son is looking for you.” Oliver froze. The room tilted. He read the words again, his breath catching in his throat. Their son. Not Isaac. Not Margaret. The one she had given away. The one he had never known existed.
His hands tightened around the paper. There had been another child. Another piece of her that she had kept from him. A son who had been out there searching for answers. And now she was gone. And all that was left were questions that could never be answered. Oliver sat in the silence, staring at the letter, at the truth of a life he had never truly known. And for the first time since Sarah’s death, he let himself grieve.
Not just for her, but for the life they had built. A life he had thought was real, a life he now realized had been filled with ghosts. The house felt different without her. It wasn’t just the emptiness, the absence of her voice, the quiet rustling of her movements as she folded clothes or hummed to herself in the kitchen. It was something deeper. It was the weight of all the things left unsaid.
Oliver had spent decades believing he understood his wife. Believing that the love they had built was real. Unshakeable. Now, in the days following her death, that belief was crumbling like sand slipping through his fingers. He sat at the kitchen table, the letter in front of him. “Your son is looking for you.” The words felt like a wound that wouldn’t stop bleeding.
Sarah had been carrying this truth for years. She had let it fester inside her, let it eat away at her. And she had never told him. Oliver clenched his fists, staring at the faded ink. How could she? How could she sit across from him at the dinner table every night, knowing she had another child in the world? How could she watch their children grow and never once speak his name?
Had she planned to take this secret to the grave? She had confessed so much before she died. The money, the doubts, the fact that she had not married him for love, at least not at first. But this—this she had kept, and now Oliver was left to deal with it alone. Isaac and Margaret didn’t understand. They were grieving, too, but their pain was different. To them, Sarah had been a mother, steady and constant, the center of their world….
