I sat in the plastic chair in the hallway, staring at the scuffed floor tiles. Sixty years ago, a white woman running South with a black mechanic wasn’t just a scandal; it was a death sentence. We had dodged her father’s men, slept in train cars, and starved together to be free.
I remembered the fear in her eyes that night in 1955, waiting for the freight train to Illinois. I had always thought it was fear for us, for our forbidden love in a world that hated it. Now, her dying confession made me question every glance she had ever cast over her shoulder. “I used you.” The words echoed in my head, drowning out the condolences of the doctor. Had I been her knight in shining armor, or just her getaway driver? I drove home to the empty house we had bought with forty years of factory wages.
The silence in the hallway was heavy, pressing against my eardrums. Every picture on the wall was a lie now — the wedding photos, the anniversaries, the smiles. I needed to know what she had been running from, if not her father’s bigotry. I walked into our bedroom, the scent of her lavender perfume still lingering on the pillows. Under the bed, pushed far back into the corner, was her old cedar chest. She had always told me it was full of “boring girl things” and asked me never to open it.
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