The first letter was dated one year after our wedding.
I remembered that year clearly.
We had been young, foolish, and completely convinced that love would solve everything.
We had rented a tiny apartment with leaking pipes and a kitchen so small that only one person could stand in it comfortably.
We had argued about money.
We had laughed about burnt dinners.
We had celebrated our first Christmas with a tree that leaned badly to one side.
And we had been happy.
Or at least I thought we had been.
I began reading.
Elaine,
Today is our first anniversary.
You are asleep beside me as I write this, and I keep looking at you instead of finishing this letter.
I thought marriage would make me brave.
It hasn't.
I have discovered that loving someone gives you more things to lose.
I am terrified of losing you.
I wiped my eyes.
Daniel had never been good at expressing fear.
He had always been the calm one.
The strong one.
When something went wrong, he was the man who said, "We'll figure it out."
But there was more.
I wanted to tell you tonight that I love you more than I knew it was possible to love another person.
Instead, I complained about the electricity bill.
I'm sorry.
Maybe one day I'll learn how to say the important things before the ordinary things take over.
I smiled through my tears.
"Idiot," I whispered.
It sounded like something I would have said to him when he was alive.
I opened the second envelope.
Year Two.
That letter was about the day I lost my first pregnancy.
I had never known Daniel had written about it.
Today Elaine cried in the bathroom for forty-three minutes.
I sat outside the door because she asked me to leave her alone.
I wanted to break the door down.
I wanted to tell her it wasn't her fault.
I wanted to take her pain and put it inside my own body.
But she needed space, so I stayed outside.
I hope she knows that when I was sitting on that cold floor, I was praying for her.
Not for another child.
For her.
I stopped.
Daniel had never talked about that day.
Neither had I.
It had been one of those wounds we had silently agreed not to touch.
But now I remembered.
I remembered thinking he didn't understand.
I remembered being angry because he had gone quiet.
I remembered lying awake that night, convinced he didn't hurt as much as I did.
I had been wrong.
So terribly wrong.
I continued reading.
Each letter revealed something I had missed.
In Year Three, he wrote about taking a second job without telling me because he was afraid we would lose our apartment.
In Year Four, he wrote about how proud he was when I started my own small business.
In Year Five, he wrote about the first time we almost divorced.
That letter was harder to read.
Tonight Elaine said she doesn't know if she still loves me.
I pretended that didn't destroy me.
After she went to bed, I sat in the car and cried.
Tomorrow I will try again.
Not because I'm afraid of being alone.
Because I still believe the woman I married is somewhere behind the anger.
And I believe the man she married is still inside me too.
I lowered the letter.
For twenty-three years, I had believed our marriage survived because I had been the one who refused to give up.
Now I wasn't so sure.
I looked at the remaining envelopes.
There were seven.
I picked up Year Six.
Then I noticed something.
Every letter had one thing in common.
Daniel never wrote about himself alone.
He wrote about me.
My fears.
My dreams.
My mistakes.
My victories.
He had been watching me all those years.
Loving me quietly.
But one question wouldn't leave my mind.
If he had loved me enough to write all these letters...
why had he never sent a single one?