The next time I thought about the garage, I remembered the yellow paper first.
Not the photographs.
Not the pencil behind Wendell's ear.
Not even the way his face had changed when he realized I had seen the message.
I remembered the paper.
It was such an ordinary thing.
A torn sheet from a legal pad, held in place by blue tape.
Yet I couldn't stop thinking about how deliberately it had been placed there.
Wendell had wanted those words to remain visible.
He had wanted them to mean something.
And he had chosen a date that mattered to him.
I didn't know everything that lay behind the gesture.
But I no longer believed it was meaningless.
That was a start.
I had gone home that day feeling different from the way I had arrived.
I was still uncertain.
I still had questions.
But the hurt I had carried for months had begun to loosen its hold on me.
For a long time, I had assumed that Wendell's refusal to let me see his house meant he didn't trust me.
I had taken his silence personally.
I had wondered whether I was asking for too much simply by wanting to know where he lived.
Now I was beginning to see that I might have misunderstood some of his reasons.
That didn't excuse the way he had handled things.
It did, however, give us something to work with.
I thought about that while I made myself supper.
I thought about it while I washed my cup.
And I thought about it later, when I sat in the living room and noticed Dwight's photograph on the shelf.
For a moment, I felt guilty.
I had been happy with Wendell.
Then I had discovered something that suggested he had been planning a special day for me.
The happiness that followed felt almost like a betrayal.
I knew that wasn't reasonable.
Dwight was gone.
Nothing I did now could change the years we had shared.
I could keep loving his memory without refusing every new happiness that came my way.
Still, knowing something in my head didn't always make it easy to accept in my heart.
I looked at the photograph.
"I hope you understand," I whispered.
There was no answer.
There never was.
But I felt calmer after saying it.
I didn't believe Dwight would have wanted me to spend the rest of my life alone out of loyalty to him.
I had no way of knowing what he would have said about Wendell.
I only knew that I was allowed to make my own decisions.
I was allowed to care about someone again.
And I was allowed to expect honesty from the person I chose.
Those things did not contradict each other.
The next time Wendell and I spoke, I found myself paying attention to how he handled the ordinary parts of our conversation.
I didn't want to turn every word into a test.
That would have been unfair to both of us.
But I wanted to see whether our conversation in the garage had changed anything.
He asked how I was doing.
I told him the truth.
I said I had been thinking about Christmas.
He listened.
Then he asked whether I had any plans for the day.
I told him I hadn't decided.
There was no elaborate discussion.
No grand promise.
Just two people trying to talk about something that mattered.
I found that reassuring.
I also noticed that Wendell seemed less guarded when I asked about his plans.
He didn't suddenly tell me everything.
He didn't transform into a man who shared every detail of his life.
But he no longer seemed as frightened of the questions.
That was enough for me to notice.
I tried not to make too much of it.
Trust grows in small moments.
It can also be damaged in small moments.
I had learned both lessons.
I wanted to give Wendell the chance to show me that he meant what he had said.
I wanted him to have the chance to do things differently.
But I wasn't going to spend the rest of my life guessing.
I had already lost too much time to fear.
The thought made me uncomfortable because I knew how easily a person could become demanding after being hurt.
I didn't want to punish Wendell for the things I imagined he might be hiding.
I wanted to deal with what he actually did.
If he spoke honestly, I would listen.
If he avoided a question, I would tell him I had noticed.
If he needed time, I would give him time, provided he didn't expect me to wait forever without knowing why.
That seemed fair.
It was fair to him.
It was fair to me.
And it was the first time since Dwight died that I felt I was making room for a relationship without making myself smaller to keep it.
The date on the yellow paper stayed in my mind.
December 24.
I began to think about the day in practical terms.
What would I cook?
Would I decorate the house?
Would I feel sad when I woke up?
Of course I would.
I knew that much.
There would be moments when I missed Dwight so sharply that I might not want to speak.
There would be memories I couldn't share with Wendell because they belonged to another life.
But perhaps there could also be laughter.
Perhaps there could be a meal shared with someone who understood that happiness did not require forgetting.
I wanted that possibility.
I was afraid of it too.
Hope can feel dangerous when you have already learned how quickly life can take something away.
You begin to protect yourself from disappointment by refusing to expect anything good.
Then, when something good finally appears, you find yourself looking for the hidden cost.
I had been doing that with Wendell.
Every time he was kind, I wondered what he wasn't telling me.
Every time he changed the subject, I assumed I had discovered something terrible.
I didn't want to keep living that way.
But I also didn't want to close my eyes.
There had to be a middle ground between suspicion and blind faith.
I was determined to find it.
A few days later, I thought again about the moment Wendell had stood at the top of the ramp.
His expression had been impossible to mistake.
He hadn't looked annoyed that I had found the photographs.
He hadn't looked angry that I had read the message.
He had looked as though something deeply personal had been exposed before he was ready.
At the time, I had interpreted that fear as another reason not to trust him.
Now I wondered whether it had been the opposite.
Perhaps he cared so much about what I would think that he had made the whole situation harder than it needed to be.
I could understand that kind of fear.
I had felt it myself.
After Dwight died, I had hidden my loneliness from people because I didn't want them to think I was weak.
I had smiled when I wanted to cry.
I had said I was fine when I wasn't.
I had made it difficult for people to help me because I was afraid of what their concern might reveal about me.
I had done those things out of pride.
Wendell might have been doing something similar.
I couldn't know for certain.
But I could allow for the possibility.
That was what I decided.
I would not assume the worst before he had a chance to explain.
I would also not pretend that the past few months had been easy.
Both truths needed to remain in the room with us.
When I thought of the yellow paper again, I no longer felt the same sharp ache.
I felt curious.
I wanted to know what Wendell had planned.
I wanted to understand why Christmas Eve mattered so much.
And I wanted to see whether the place he had kept hidden could become somewhere we might share a part of our lives.
I didn't need the day to be perfect.
I needed it to be honest.
That was the one thing I had learned from our conversation.
Love could survive an imperfect room.
It could survive awkward words.
It could survive a difficult explanation.
What it could not survive indefinitely was one person standing outside while the other decided what they were allowed to know.
I wasn't going to ask Wendell to open every door at once.
I was asking him to stop making me wonder whether there was a door at all.
For now, he seemed willing to try.
I decided I would try too.
Click here to continue reading: PART 9: I Stopped Trying to Guess What Wendell Was Hiding and Started Paying Attention to the Small Ways He Was Learning to Trust Me
I Thought the Hardest Thing About Losing My Husband Was Learning to Sleep Alone Until Another Man Made Me Question Everything
Part 8 of 20
