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“He said, ‘Tell her I was here.'”
“Then why didn’t you?”
Adrian looked away.
And suddenly I understood that whatever answer came next had nothing to do with James anymore.
***
Adrian finally looked at me.
“At first, I thought I was keeping my promise.”
“So why keep lying?”
“So why keep lying?”
“Because when I came home, I’d already decided what I was going to tell you. Then I saw you.”
He swallowed.
“You thanked me for being there with him.”
I remembered.
I’d hugged Adrian that day.
“You thanked me for being there with him.”
“After that, telling you the truth meant admitting I’d lied. A year passed. Then five. Then every year made me more ashamed.”
I stared at him.
“You weren’t protecting me for 56 years.”
“No.”
“Maybe you thought you were at first. After that, you were protecting yourself from telling me.”
“You weren’t protecting me for 56 years.”
Adrian lowered his head.
I looked at the paper rose.
“You knew James.”
“Yes.”
“You knew me too.”
His eyes filled.
He looked down at James’s duffel.
“There is something else.”
I waited.
“I know where James is buried.”
I froze.
“I know where James is buried.”
“You know where my husband is buried?”
“Yes.”
“How long have you known?”
Adrian didn’t answer quickly enough.
“How long?”
“Years.”
I stared at him.
“By the time I learned where he was,” he continued. “…telling you meant explaining everything else. So I kept telling myself there was no point reopening it.”
“How long?”
“No point?”
“I know how that sounds, Mary.”
“No. You don’t.”
He lowered his hand.
“I was ashamed.”
I looked at the man who had spent half a century deciding which pieces of my husband I was allowed to have.
“Where is he?”
“I was ashamed.”
Adrian gave me the cemetery name.
Then he offered to take me there.
“No,” I refused. “I’m deciding now.”
I handed him the folded yellow dress.
“Drive.”
***
Outside the car window, the world moved by in a haze of streetlights and storefronts. Everything had changed.
“I’m deciding now.”
Except my love for my husband. That hadn’t moved an inch.
“Why today?” I asked.
Adrian looked at the roses.
“Because every year I told myself I’d tell you before the next anniversary.” He paused. “Last week, I found out I have cancer. And suddenly I wasn’t sure how many anniversaries I had left to hide behind.”
“Why today?”
My anger loosened for just a second.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. Not yet.” He looked toward the road. “I should’ve told you while I still had decades ahead of me, not because I got scared of running out of them.”
“I’m sorry.”
***
At James’s grave, I placed all 56 real roses beneath his name.
Adrian stepped closer.
“Mary…”
“Go sit in the car.”
He obeyed.
For the first time in 56 years, nobody stood between my husband and me.
I held the crooked paper flower.
“You idiot.”
At James’s grave, I placed all 56 real roses beneath his name.
A laugh escaped with my tears.
“I would’ve come.”
I knew I couldn’t have reached James there. But that wasn’t what I meant.
“I would’ve been terrified,” I whispered.
I touched his name.
“But I would’ve come anyway.”
I left Adrian’s perfect roses.
I kept James’s ugly one.
“But I would’ve come anyway.”
At the car, Adrian asked, “Do you hate me?”
“Today I do a little.”
He nodded.
“Ask me another day.”
***
At 11:57 that night, I placed the crooked paper rose alone in the huge empty vase.
Beside it, I set our wedding photograph.
“Do you hate me?”
One terrible little flower in a vase meant for dozens.
I touched its bent petal.
“You were late.”
Then I smiled.
“But it finally got here.”