The letter wasn’t about me. It was a timeline. Dates, screenshots, bank transfers, hotel bookings, and every excuse he’d ever given both of us placed side by side. Next to each lie she’d written only what she’d been told that same day. By the second page I realized something horrifying: whenever he was “with me,” he was telling her he was caring for his dying father. His father had been dead for three years.
At the bottom she’d written, “I don’t want you to forgive me for finding you too late. I only want you to know he never chose either of us. He chose whatever version of himself worked that day.” Folded behind it was a key and the address of a storage unit she’d rented after discovering he was paying for it every month in cash.
I went there alone the next morning. The lock clicked open, and inside wasn’t another woman’s life. It was three of them. Three labeled boxes. One with my name. One with hers. And one marked simply, “Next.”
