Emily sat with her hands folded in front of her.<\/p>\n
She looked at the envelope.<\/p>\n
Then she looked at me.<\/p>\n
"I should have told you sooner."<\/p>\n
I didn't answer.<\/p>\n
I was tired of hearing that.<\/p>\n
I wanted to know what she had been hiding.<\/p>\n
I wanted to know why Daniel had been sending money to someone connected to our old house.<\/p>\n
And I wanted to know why Emily had been keeping it from me.<\/p>\n
She took a breath.<\/p>\n
"After Daniel died, I found the records."<\/p>\n
I waited.<\/p>\n
"I didn't know what they meant at first."<\/p>\n
She looked down.<\/p>\n
"I thought there might be an explanation."<\/p>\n
I could understand that.<\/p>\n
I had been looking for one myself.<\/p>\n
But I couldn't understand why she hadn't told me.<\/p>\n
"Why didn't you bring them to me?"<\/p>\n
Emily's eyes filled with tears.<\/p>\n
"Because I was afraid of what you would think."<\/p>\n
I stared at her.<\/p>\n
"Of what I would think?"<\/p>\n
She nodded.<\/p>\n
I couldn't believe it.<\/p>\n
I had been grieving my husband.<\/p>\n
I had been trying to survive each day.<\/p>\n
And she had been carrying something that might have changed everything I believed about him.<\/p>\n
I looked away.<\/p>\n
I didn't want to say something I would regret.<\/p>\n
But I couldn't pretend I wasn't hurt.<\/p>\n
"You should have trusted me."<\/p>\n
Emily lowered her head.<\/p>\n
"I know."<\/p>\n
I sat quietly for a moment.<\/p>\n
Then I looked at the papers again.<\/p>\n
There were still things I didn't understand.<\/p>\n
The account.<\/p>\n
The payments.<\/p>\n
The address.<\/p>\n
I needed to know how they were connected.<\/p>\n
I needed to know who had been receiving the money.<\/p>\n
And I needed to know why Daniel had never told me.<\/p>\n
"Did you recognize the name on the account?"<\/p>\n
Emily shook her head.<\/p>\n
"No."<\/p>\n
"Then how did you know it was connected to our old house?"<\/p>\n
She pointed toward the final page.<\/p>\n
"The address was on one of the records."<\/p>\n
I looked at it again.<\/p>\n
The same address.<\/p>\n
The same house.<\/p>\n
I felt as though I was looking at a place I had never really known.<\/p>\n
I thought about the years Daniel and I had lived there.<\/p>\n
The mornings we had shared.<\/p>\n
The evenings we had spent talking about our future.<\/p>\n
I remembered how happy I had been.<\/p>\n
I remembered believing that we had nothing to hide from each other.<\/p>\n
Now I was wondering how much of that belief had been wrong.<\/p>\n
I looked at Emily.<\/p>\n
"Did Daniel ever talk about someone who lived there before me?"<\/p>\n
She hesitated.<\/p>\n
Then she shook her head.<\/p>\n
"No."<\/p>\n
I waited.<\/p>\n
She looked as though she wanted to say more.<\/p>\n
But she didn't.<\/p>\n
I felt a wave of frustration.<\/p>\n
"Emily, I can't keep guessing."<\/p>\n
She nodded.<\/p>\n
"I know."<\/p>\n
I looked down at the papers.<\/p>\n
I tried to find something that would explain the payments.<\/p>\n
There was nothing.<\/p>\n
Only dates.<\/p>\n
Amounts.<\/p>\n
And the address.<\/p>\n
I had spent so many years trusting Daniel that I had never thought to question the things he did.<\/p>\n
I had never asked where every payment went.<\/p>\n
I had never asked why he sometimes seemed distracted.<\/p>\n
I had never wondered whether there was something about his past that he had chosen not to share.<\/p>\n
I thought I knew him.<\/p>\n
I thought I knew my best friend, too.<\/p>\n
But now I was sitting across from her, looking at documents that seemed to connect them both to something I had never known.<\/p>\n
I looked at the envelope.<\/p>\n
Then I looked at Emily.<\/p>\n
"Why did you wait until now?"<\/p>\n
She took a long breath.<\/p>\n
"Because I didn't know how to tell you."<\/p>\n
I wanted to believe that.<\/p>\n
But I couldn't stop thinking about the photograph.<\/p>\n
The way she had called it our last one.<\/p>\n
The way she had looked at me.<\/p>\n
The way she had said I would discover who she really was.<\/p>\n
I realized that whatever she had been hiding, it had been there long before Daniel died.<\/p>\n
And I had been the only person who didn't know.<\/p>\n
Source: kaylestore.net<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n Emily sat with her hands folded in front of her. She looked at the envelope. Then she looked at me. "I should have told you sooner." I didn't answer. I … <\/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-10682","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\/10682","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=10682"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/onesharedstory.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10682\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10690,"href":"https:\/\/onesharedstory.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10682\/revisions\/10690"}],"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=10682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onesharedstory.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onesharedstory.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nClick here to continue reading: PART 7: I Tried to Find a Simple Explanation for the Money, but Every Answer Led Me Back to the Same House<\/a><\/strong><\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"