Letters.
Small childhood belongings.
He had continued writing letters even though he didn’t know whether Emily would ever read them.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked.
Mark looked down.
“I was ashamed.”
“Of your daughter?”
“No. Of losing her.”
That answer didn’t erase what he had done.
I was still hurt.
He had kept something enormous from me for fourteen years. I felt as though I had been given only part of the story of our marriage.
But I also understood something I hadn’t understood when I first opened the unit.
Mark hadn’t created another family.
He had been holding onto the memory of one he had lost.
That didn’t excuse keeping the truth from me. But it helped me understand why the storage unit existed.
Still, one question remained.
“What about Emily?”
Mark looked frightened.
“I don’t know where she is.”
“Then find her.”
He shook his head.
“What if she doesn’t want to hear from me?”
“That should be her decision.”
For the first time, Mark looked at me differently.
“You really think I should contact her?”
“I think she deserves the chance to decide for herself.”
We spent several weeks gathering old documents and searching through the information Mark still had.
Eventually, we found Emily.
She was twenty-two and living less than an hour away.
Mark stared at her photograph for several minutes.
