"He never said he was too tired," Margaret said softly. "Not once. Even when I could see how exhausted he was."
I nodded, not trusting my voice, and reached for another box. Inside were photo albums mixed with old Christmas cards, insurance papers, and a collection of coffee mugs from vacation spots they'd visited over the years.
Margaret's face lit up as she opened the first photo album.
"Our Mediterranean cruise," she said, pointing to a picture of her and Cap on what looked like a ship's deck. "Twentieth anniversary. I'd always wanted to do something like that, and Michael planned the whole thing. Saved for two years." She laughed, but it came out watery. "I shouldn't be laughing about this, but he insisted on trying 'authentic Turkish street food' when we stopped in Kusadasi. Swore he had an iron stomach from all those years of firehouse cooking."
She turned the page, revealing a photo of Cap looking green around the gills, giving a weak thumbs up from what was clearly a ship's cabin.
"Twenty-four hours," Margaret said, shaking her head. "Poor man was a prisoner in our bathroom for an entire day. But you know what he was most upset about? That he'd 'ruined' my dream vacation. He kept apologizing, like getting food poisoning was somehow a personal failing. I had to convince him that taking care of him was exactly where I wanted to be."
That's what I threw away,the thought hit me like a physical blow.Someone who would stay. Someone who would worry about disappointing me more than his own suffering.
We moved on to another box — old kitchen gadgets, a broken watch he'd never gotten fixed, reading glasses from three differentprescriptions. Margaret pulled out a small appointment book, and her eyes filled with tears.
"He never forgot," she said suddenly. "Our anniversary, the kids' birthdays, even stupid little things like the day we adopted our first dog. I didn't realize how special that was until I talked to other wives. Some of my friends' husbands couldn't remember their own anniversary without Facebook reminding them."
She flipped through the pages, showing me entries in Cap's careful handwriting.Margaret flowers,one read.Aaron science fair.Izzy promotion exam.
My name in his handwriting made something crack inside my chest. He'd been keeping track of my life the same way he'd kept track of his family's milestones.
I don't even know his birthday,I realized with a sick feeling.What kind of person does that make me?
"I keep thinking about all the ordinary moments," Margaret said, closing the appointment book and setting it aside with a stack of old utility bills. "The times he'd come home grumpy about some administrative bullshit, and I'd make him sit at the kitchen table while I cooked dinner, and he'd just... decompress. Tell me about his day. The silly fights we had about whose turn it was to take out the trash, or how he insisted on watching the Weather Channel every morning even though I told him his phone had a weather app."
She was crying now, quiet tears that she didn't bother to wipe away.
"I miss him telling me I was loading the dishwasher wrong. Isn't that stupid? I miss being annoyed at him for leaving his coffee mug on the bathroom counter every single morning for twenty-six years."
I miss him more than I miss the promotion,the thought hit me with stunning clarity.I miss the man I pushed away more than anything.
We worked for another hour, sorting through bankstatements and old birthday cards, Christmas ornaments and expired coupons. The accumulated treasures and detritus of a marriage that had lasted through shift work and dangerous calls and the thousand small challenges that came with loving someone in a job that could take them away. With each story Margaret shared, I felt another piece of my carefully constructed armor crack.
This was what I'd wanted, deep down. Not the fairy tale version of love from movies, but the real thing — someone who showed up, who remembered what mattered, who chose you every single day, even when they were tired. Even when it was hard.
I'd had that. For a brief, shining moment, I'd had someone who cooked for me, who held me when I fell apart, who was willing to fight for me even when he didn't understand the rules of the war.
And I'd thrown it away because I was too afraid to be vulnerable.
"Oh, what's this?" Margaret said, pulling something from between the pages of an old fire manual. "It's addressed to you, honey."
She handed me a sealed envelope, my name written in Cap's careful script across the front. My hands started shaking before I even opened it.
"He must have written this for you and forgotten to give it to you," Margaret said. "You should take it home."
I stared at the envelope, feeling like I was holding a live grenade. "Are you sure?"
"Of course. He'd want you to have it."
The drive home passed in a blur. The envelope sat on my passenger seat like it was radioactive, and I found myself glancing at it every few seconds, as if it might disappear.
At a red light, I watched an elderly couple walking hand-in-hand on the sidewalk, the man adjusting his pace to match his wife's slower steps. In the grocery store parking lot, a youngfather was loading bags while his toddler "helped" by handing him items one at a time, both of them laughing at some private joke. Ordinary moments. The kind Cap and Margaret had shared for thirty-two years. The kind I'd convinced myself I didn't need.
Back in my apartment, I set it on my kitchen table and stared at it for a long time. The handwriting was shaky — he must have written it when he was already getting sick. My name looked different in his failing penmanship, more fragile somehow.
With trembling fingers, I tore open the envelope.
Izzy,
