PART 1: THE DIVORCE
The morning after Robert's funeral, the woman he had married just weeks after divorcing me appeared on my porch with his blue tie in her hand.
I recognized the tie before I even saw his face properly. I'd given it to Robert for our thirty-fifth anniversary. He wore it when he signed the divorce papers and again when he married Claire.
"Greta," he said, "Robert made me promise not to tell you the truth until after his death."
I gripped the door tightly. “You were with my husband for four months. Any truths you shared can remain buried with him.”
I started to close it.
“He didn’t leave you because he loved me.”
That stopped me.
Four months earlier, Robert and I had returned from the hospital after learning that his cancer had spread. It was stage four. At home, I placed his medication by the sink, as I had done with countless small details throughout our thirty-nine years of marriage.
“We’ll face this together,” I told him.
Robert stepped aside.
“I don’t want you by my side, Greta.”
At first, I thought he was just talking about fear. Then he asked me for a divorce and said he wanted to spend his remaining time with Claire, a coworker he barely knew.
When our children, Hanna and Steven, arrived, Robert told them that I was abandoning him.
I called it a lie, but he lowered his head and let them believe it. Steven asked him directly if he had filed for divorce.
Robert said nothing.
His silence should have exposed him. Instead, my children decided I was cruel enough to abandon their dying father.
Three weeks later, I signed the papers.
Robert gave me the house, most of our savings, and some of his business shares. The advisor described the agreement as unusually generous.
“Why are you giving me almost everything?”
“You will need it more than I will.”
He was wearing a blue tie that day.
Outside, Hanna and Steven told me that Claire would be taking care of him and that they planned to get married in three weeks.
"I was prepared to stay," I said.
Hanna looked at me coldly. "Then you should have acted like one."
For the next four months, my children barely spoke to me. I learned of Robert's death from a message I received at midnight.
The next day, Hanna told me I wasn't welcome at the funeral.
“He was my husband for thirty-nine years.”
“He is no longer your husband.”
I spent the funeral alone.
The next morning, Claire arrived with the tie and three documents.
PART 2: THE TRUTH HE HID Continued on the next page
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