I asked her who she was, and she looked at me for a long time before she answered. She said she’d known my husband since she was nineteen, long before I met him, and that the nickname was something he’d chosen for himself because he didn’t like anyone knowing his real name. I told her that was impossible because I’d known him for forty-one years, and there wasn’t a story from before our marriage that I hadn’t heard at least once. She smiled sadly and said, “He told me you weren’t supposed to know about me.” Then she reached into her purse and pulled out a photograph that had been folded so many times the edges were soft.
It was my husband, but younger than I’d ever seen him, standing beside a woman and a little girl in front of a house I’d never seen. On the back was a date from 1981 and three words in his handwriting: “I’ll come back.” I asked her why she had it, and she said he’d given it to her when he left town, promising he’d return after he got his life settled. He never did, at least not in the way she’d expected. Instead, he married me, built a life with me, and apparently kept one promise she’d never stopped waiting on. She said she’d started visiting his grave after the funeral because she wanted him to know she’d finally forgiven him. I asked about the little girl, and her face changed.
She said the girl was her daughter, and my husband had been the reason she existed. I couldn’t speak for a moment because my husband had always told me we hadn’t met until 1985. She watched me carefully and then said, “He told you that because he didn’t want you to think he left you for us.” I asked where the girl was now, and she said she’d been living three states away for years and had never known my husband was dead. Then she handed me a second photograph, taken only six months before his funeral. My husband was standing beside a woman I recognized immediately—not the woman in front of me, but someone I’d seen in one of our old wedding pictures. And on the back, in my husband’s handwriting, were four words: “She knows everything now.”
