I used to think that being careful meant keeping my expectations low.
If I expected little, I told myself, then I couldn't be disappointed.
It seemed sensible.
It also made it difficult to enjoy anything that came my way.
I had become so good at preparing for the worst that I sometimes treated happiness as a warning sign.
When Wendell was kind, I wondered what he wasn't telling me.
When he was quiet, I wondered whether he was pulling away.
When he spoke about Christmas, I tried to calculate how much hope I could safely allow myself.
I was tired of thinking that way.
I didn't know how to stop immediately.
But I was beginning to recognize the habit for what it was.
Fear.
Not wisdom.
Fear had helped me survive some difficult days after Dwight died.
It had reminded me not to rush into things I wasn't ready for.
It had given me permission to stay home when the world felt too demanding.
But fear had also kept me from admitting how lonely I was.
It had made me ashamed of wanting companionship.
And now it was making me suspicious of a man who had given me reasons to care about him.
I didn't want to let fear make every decision.
That didn't mean I would ignore my instincts.
It meant I would listen to them without automatically treating every worry as proof.
There was a difference.
I thought about the garage again.
The photographs had not been hidden in a locked box.
The paper had not been buried somewhere I could never find it.
It had been attached to a wall with two pieces of blue tape.
Wendell had kept it where he could see it.
That fact mattered.
It suggested that whatever he was preparing was not something he wanted to erase.
He had wanted to preserve it.
I wondered whether the yellow paper had been on the wall for days or weeks.
I wondered whether he looked at it every morning when he entered the garage.
I wondered whether the words gave him courage or made him nervous.
Those questions were different from the ones I had asked before.
I was no longer trying to prove that he didn't trust me.
I was trying to understand what mattered to him.
That was a better place to begin.
I still needed him to explain the house.
I still needed to know why he had made me wait so long.
But I was beginning to see that the answer might be more complicated than embarrassment or rejection.
Sometimes people hide things because they are ashamed.
Sometimes they hide them because they are afraid of losing control over something important.
Sometimes they hide them because they have convinced themselves that a surprise will be ruined if the other person knows too much.
None of those reasons makes secrecy harmless.
But they are not all the same.
I wanted to hear which reason belonged to Wendell.
I also wanted to know whether he could admit that his choice had hurt me, even if he had never meant it to.
So far, he had done that.
I held on to that fact.
One afternoon, I found myself remembering a conversation we'd had before I discovered the garage.
I had asked him about his house.
He had changed the subject.
At the time, I had gone home feeling rejected.
Now I wondered whether he had been thinking about the yellow paper and the photographs while we spoke.
Perhaps he had been trying not to reveal the plan.
Perhaps he had been afraid of giving too much away.
I couldn't know.
I didn't want to turn that possibility into another invented explanation.
But I could acknowledge that there might have been more happening beneath his silence than I had understood.
That was enough for now.
I had made a decision to give him room to explain himself.
I intended to keep that promise.
I also intended to keep the promise I had made to myself.
I would not make excuses for him forever.
I would not tell myself that my questions were unreasonable just because asking them made him uncomfortable.
And I would not confuse being loved with being required to wait outside.
If we were going to build something together, there had to be room for both of us.
I wanted Wendell to feel that he could tell me the truth without being punished for having imperfections.
I also needed to feel that he trusted me enough to tell it.
Neither of those things could happen if we continued pretending that nothing was wrong.
I thought about that while preparing for the holiday.
I didn't do anything elaborate.
I simply began considering what I wanted the day to feel like.
I wanted warmth.
I wanted a little laughter.
I wanted the freedom to miss Dwight without feeling that I had spoiled the occasion.
And I wanted to see Wendell in a place that belonged to him.
Not because I needed proof that he cared.
Because I wanted to know the person I was growing to love.
The distinction was important.
I didn't want to enter his home as a detective.
I wanted to enter as someone he had chosen to welcome.
I wanted to sit with him without wondering whether I was somewhere I wasn't supposed to be.
I wanted to be able to ask a question and trust that he would answer honestly, even if the answer wasn't polished.
Perhaps that was too much to hope for all at once.
But it didn't seem unreasonable to want it eventually.
I had spent years building a life with Dwight.
I knew what it meant to share a home with another person.
It wasn't about having everything in common.
It wasn't about agreeing on every decision.
It was about knowing that the other person was willing to let you see the ordinary truth of their life.
The unfinished work.
The bad days.
The things they were proud of.
The things they wished were different.
A relationship could not grow entirely on carefully selected moments.
It needed ordinary honesty too.
I wanted that with Wendell.
And I was beginning to believe that he wanted it with me, although he had a difficult way of showing it.
The thought made me smile.
Then I remembered how frightened he had looked when I found the photographs.
My smile faded.
I still didn't know what he had been so afraid of.
I could imagine several explanations, but none of them was certain.
I decided to stop trying to solve the question in my head.
I would wait until he was ready to tell me.
Not forever.
Not without boundaries.
But long enough to give the conversation a chance to happen naturally.
I had learned that some answers could not be hurried.
I had also learned that waiting became harmful when it was the only thing one person was ever asked to do.
I hoped Wendell understood that difference now.
I hoped he was thinking about it too.
When I went to bed that night, I found myself thinking about Christmas Eve without the same tightness in my chest.
The date was approaching.
I was still nervous.
But beneath the nervousness, there was something I had not felt in a long time.
Anticipation.
I allowed myself to feel it.
I didn't apologize to Dwight's photograph.
I didn't tell myself I was being foolish.
I simply let the feeling exist.
It was a small thing.
But it felt like the beginning of something.
Click here to continue reading: PART 12: The More I Thought About Wendell’s Careful Preparations, the More I Realized That Love Could Be Sincere and Still Need to Learn How to Tell the Truth
I Thought the Hardest Thing About Losing My Husband Was Learning to Sleep Alone Until Another Man Made Me Question Everything
Part 11 of 20
