I barely slept that night.<\/p>\n
Every time I closed my eyes, I remembered Emily's face.<\/p>\n
The way she had looked at me.<\/p>\n
The way her hand had trembled.<\/p>\n
The way she had said that tomorrow I would discover something about her.<\/p>\n
I tried to convince myself there had to be a reasonable explanation.<\/p>\n
Maybe she was planning to move away.<\/p>\n
Maybe she had decided to end our friendship.<\/p>\n
Maybe she was going through something she hadn't told me about.<\/p>\n
But none of those possibilities explained the way she had looked at me.<\/p>\n
It was the expression of someone who had been carrying a burden for a very long time.<\/p>\n
And I had no idea what that burden was.<\/p>\n
I kept thinking about the photograph.<\/p>\n
I had taken it before we went back inside.<\/p>\n
We were sitting close together, both looking toward the camera.<\/p>\n
Emily was smiling.<\/p>\n
I was smiling, too.<\/p>\n
Anyone looking at that picture would have thought we were happy.<\/p>\n
They would have seen two old friends enjoying a holiday.<\/p>\n
They wouldn't have known that one of us was afraid of what the next day would bring.<\/p>\n
I looked at the photograph several times.<\/p>\n
Then I put my phone down.<\/p>\n
I didn't want to think about it anymore.<\/p>\n
But I couldn't stop.<\/p>\n
By morning, I was exhausted.<\/p>\n
Emily was already sitting near the window when I entered the room.<\/p>\n
She had a cup of coffee in front of her.<\/p>\n
The curtains were open.<\/p>\n
The ocean was visible beyond the glass.<\/p>\n
She looked as though she hadn't slept either.<\/p>\n
I stood there for a moment.<\/p>\n
She didn't look up.<\/p>\n
I knew then that whatever she had been planning to tell me, she had not changed her mind.<\/p>\n
I walked over and sat across from her.<\/p>\n
"You knew yesterday that you were going to tell me something."<\/p>\n
Emily slowly nodded.<\/p>\n
"Yes."<\/p>\n
I waited.<\/p>\n
She wrapped both hands around her coffee cup.<\/p>\n
"I just couldn't bring myself to say it."<\/p>\n
I felt my stomach tighten.<\/p>\n
"Then tell me now."<\/p>\n
She looked at me.<\/p>\n
There was something in her expression that I couldn't understand.<\/p>\n
Fear, perhaps.<\/p>\n
Or regret.<\/p>\n
Maybe both.<\/p>\n
For a moment, neither of us spoke.<\/p>\n
Then she reached into her handbag.<\/p>\n
She took out a small envelope.<\/p>\n
It was plain.<\/p>\n
There was nothing written on the outside.<\/p>\n
She placed it on the table between us.<\/p>\n
"I need you to look at these."<\/p>\n
I stared at the envelope.<\/p>\n
"What is it?"<\/p>\n
"Some records."<\/p>\n
"What kind of records?"<\/p>\n
She didn't answer.<\/p>\n
Instead, she pushed the envelope closer to me.<\/p>\n
I opened it.<\/p>\n
Inside were several photocopied documents.<\/p>\n
I pulled out the first page.<\/p>\n
Then another.<\/p>\n
I saw numbers.<\/p>\n
Dates.<\/p>\n
Account information.<\/p>\n
At first, I didn't understand what I was looking at.<\/p>\n
Then I noticed a name.<\/p>\n
Daniel.<\/p>\n
I stopped.<\/p>\n
I knew his signature.<\/p>\n
I had seen it thousands of times.<\/p>\n
On cards.<\/p>\n
On documents.<\/p>\n
On the little notes he used to leave around the house.<\/p>\n
There was no mistaking it.<\/p>\n
I looked at Emily.<\/p>\n
"Why do you have documents with Daniel's signature?"<\/p>\n
She swallowed.<\/p>\n
"After Daniel died, I found something I wasn't supposed to see."<\/p>\n
I looked down at the papers again.<\/p>\n
My mind was trying to catch up.<\/p>\n
"What are you talking about?"<\/p>\n
Emily pointed toward one of the statements.<\/p>\n
I followed her finger.<\/p>\n
There were several transfers listed.<\/p>\n
The amounts were different.<\/p>\n
The dates were spread across years.<\/p>\n
I didn't understand why she was showing them to me.<\/p>\n
Then she spoke.<\/p>\n
"Daniel had been sending money to an account you didn't know about."<\/p>\n
I looked at her.<\/p>\n
"What account?"<\/p>\n
"An account that wasn't registered under his name."<\/p>\n
I felt my fingers tighten around the papers.<\/p>\n
Daniel and I had shared our lives.<\/p>\n
We had shared our home.<\/p>\n
We had shared the things that mattered.<\/p>\n
At least, that was what I had believed.<\/p>\n
I looked down at the statements.<\/p>\n
I tried to make sense of the numbers.<\/p>\n
But all I could think about was the fact that Daniel had apparently been moving money without telling me.<\/p>\n
I didn't know what that meant.<\/p>\n
I didn't know why he had done it.<\/p>\n
And I didn't know why Emily had kept it from me.<\/p>\n
"Whose account was it?"<\/p>\n
She lowered her eyes.<\/p>\n
For a moment, I thought she might refuse to answer.<\/p>\n
Then she spoke.<\/p>\n
"That's part of what I should have told you a long time ago."<\/p>\n
I stared at her.<\/p>\n
I could feel anger rising inside me.<\/p>\n
Not because she had brought me the papers.<\/p>\n
Because she had known something about my husband.<\/p>\n
And she had kept it from me.<\/p>\n
"Emily, we've been friends for thirty-seven years."<\/p>\n
She nodded.<\/p>\n
"I know."<\/p>\n
"If you knew something about Daniel, you should have told me."<\/p>\n
Her eyes filled with tears.<\/p>\n
"I know."<\/p>\n
I looked away.<\/p>\n
I didn't want to see her cry.<\/p>\n
Not yet.<\/p>\n
Not when I was still trying to understand what she had just told me.<\/p>\n
She reached toward the envelope.<\/p>\n
I pulled the papers closer.<\/p>\n
"Please," I said. "Tell me what happened."<\/p>\n
She took a breath.<\/p>\n
Then she began to explain.<\/p>\n
Source: kaylestore.net<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n I barely slept that night. Every time I closed my eyes, I remembered Emily's face. The way she had looked at me. The way her hand had trembled. The way … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10676,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10678","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sharestory"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/onesharedstory.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10678","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/onesharedstory.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/onesharedstory.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onesharedstory.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onesharedstory.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10678"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/onesharedstory.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10678\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10686,"href":"https:\/\/onesharedstory.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10678\/revisions\/10686"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onesharedstory.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10676"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/onesharedstory.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onesharedstory.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onesharedstory.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nClick here to continue reading: PART 3: The Papers in Her Handbag Led Me Back to a House I Had Not Thought About in Years<\/a><\/strong><\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"