My husband of 14 years suddenly left me. He walked away from our normal life and chose a younger woman who made him feel important again. His final words hurt the most: “I need someone who fits my status now.”
Just like that, almost 20 years together felt like they didn’t matter at all.
Five months later, one of his old coworkers called me. My husband — once proud and full of himself — had become very sick. And the young woman he left me for? She was gone. She disappeared as soon as life got hard. His “friends” left too. The man who said he deserved “more” suddenly had no one.
I’m not sure why I went back to that house. Maybe habit. Maybe love. Or maybe I just couldn’t let him suffer alone. So I moved in again and took care of him every day. Sometimes he tried to say sorry, but he never managed to finish the words. Still, I cared for him, even though he had hurt me deeply.
Almost a year later, he died peacefully in his sleep. I thought that part of my life was over — until his funeral.
She came — the young woman. She looked different: no makeup, no confidence. She handed me a small box and whispered, “You should have this.”
Inside was his journal.
My knees almost gave out when I opened it. Page after page showed a man full of regret. He wrote that letting me go was “the biggest mistake of my life,” that I had always been “the love of my life,” and that losing me had broken him inside.
She admitted she had read the journal months before and finally realized he had never really loved her. That’s why she left when he got sick. She said she had originally planned to destroy the journal in anger — but after he died, she knew I deserved the truth.
I didn’t know if I should hate her or thank her.
The final shock came when his will was read. He left everything — all his property, money, and possessions — to me. His lawyer said he had insisted that I was the only one worthy of carrying on his legacy.
I cried without stopping. Not for the money, but for the five months that had torn us apart — a wound in a love story that, in the end, had never truly ended.