He didn’t want that.

“I just want one person who can say, ‘He’s mine. I’ll take care of him.’”

I was single.

Larry was dying.

And I had always been better at solving problems than walking away from them.

Two days later, we went to the courthouse.

Larry wore a clean blue shirt somebody at the shelter had given him.

I wore my navy work dress.

When the clerk asked whether we had rings, Larry checked his empty pockets dramatically.

“Knew I forgot something.”

I laughed.

Eleven minutes later, I became his wife.

Exactly three weeks after that, I sat beside his bed in a state hospice facility and held his hand while his breathing slowly stopped.

And now his letter was telling me that the reason I had married him wasn’t entirely true.

I forced myself to keep reading.

“The liver failure was real. The month was real. What I lied about was why I asked you to marry me.”

I lowered the letter.

Then immediately picked it up again.

“My arrangements were already taken care of. Hospice or the county would have handled the paperwork. I wasn’t going to disappear without a name.”

I stood so quickly my chair scraped across the floor.

“What did you do, Larry?”

There was nowhere for my anger to go.

He was dead.

I couldn’t call him.

I couldn’t demand an explanation.

I couldn’t even force him to sit across from me and watch the expression on my face.

I kept reading.

“If I gave you a problem you could solve, I knew you would solve it.”

That sentence hurt the most.

Because it was true.

For two years, I had constantly offered Larry things.

Coffee.

Food.

Warm socks.