After thirty-six years of marriage, I divorced Troy when I discovered he’d been hiding things—large withdrawals from our account, repeated hotel stays—but refused to explain. There was no other woman, just secrets he couldn’t share.
Two years later, he died suddenly. At his funeral, his father, drunk and emotional, whispered, “You don’t even know what he did for you, do you?” Later, I received a letter from Troy. He’d been undergoing secret medical treatment out of state, trying to protect me from worry.
He hadn’t betrayed me—it was fear, not another life. I had judged and left him without knowing the full story. Love and loss can be shaped as much by silence as by truth.