My name is Helen, and for sixty-three years, I lived a life that I believed was constructed on the bedrock of absolute truth. After more than four decades of marriage to Robert, I had come to view our union not merely as a relationship, but as a singular, living entity—a sturdy, weather-beaten oak that had survived the storms of raising children, the anxieties of career shifts, and the quiet erosion of aging, only to emerge stronger with each passing season. I thought I knew the topography of my husband’s soul as intimately as I knew the lines on my own palms.
Our existence had settled into a rhythm so comfortable and predictable that it felt less like a routine and more like a sacred ritual: the morning coffee brewed to his exact specifications, consumed in a companionable silence that spoke volumes of our contentment; the Saturday pilgrimages to the farmers market, where Robert would inspect avocados with the fastidiousness of a diamond merchant while I laughed with the honey vendor; and the evenings spent on our worn leather couch, watching the same old Westerns, secure in the knowledge that we were the lucky ones.
We were the couple that others aspired to be, the living proof that love could endure the slow grind of time without losing its luster. Or so I thought.
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