I spent the rest of the morning looking through the documents.<\/p>\n
Emily stayed beside me.<\/p>\n
She didn't try to stop me.<\/p>\n
She didn't tell me what to think.<\/p>\n
She simply sat there while I examined every page.<\/p>\n
I read the dates.<\/p>\n
I read the amounts.<\/p>\n
I looked at the account information.<\/p>\n
I tried to find a pattern.<\/p>\n
The payments had been made over a period of years.<\/p>\n
They weren't all the same.<\/p>\n
Some were larger than others.<\/p>\n
But they had continued.<\/p>\n
I couldn't understand why Daniel would have done that.<\/p>\n
I couldn't understand why he had never mentioned it.<\/p>\n
And I couldn't understand why the records had ended up with Emily.<\/p>\n
I looked at her.<\/p>\n
"Did you keep all of these?"<\/p>\n
She nodded.<\/p>\n
"Yes."<\/p>\n
"Why?"<\/p>\n
She looked down.<\/p>\n
"I thought you might need them."<\/p>\n
I stared at her.<\/p>\n
"Need them for what?"<\/p>\n
She didn't answer.<\/p>\n
I looked back at the papers.<\/p>\n
I knew I was missing something.<\/p>\n
I knew there was a reason Emily had brought them to me.<\/p>\n
But I didn't know what it was.<\/p>\n
I felt as though every question I asked only created another one.<\/p>\n
I looked at the address again.<\/p>\n
It was still the same.<\/p>\n
The house where Daniel and I had lived.<\/p>\n
The house where we had started our marriage.<\/p>\n
The house connected to someone who had been there before I met him.<\/p>\n
I tried to imagine Daniel living there before me.<\/p>\n
I tried to picture the years before our wedding.<\/p>\n
I had never thought much about that time.<\/p>\n
Of course he had a life before me.<\/p>\n
We all did.<\/p>\n
But I had never imagined that his past could be connected to something he had kept hidden for so long.<\/p>\n
I looked at Emily.<\/p>\n
"Did you know the person who lived there?"<\/p>\n
She shook her head.<\/p>\n
"I didn't know who it was."<\/p>\n
I waited.<\/p>\n
"But I knew the address."<\/p>\n
I felt my heart beating faster.<\/p>\n
"How?"<\/p>\n
She looked at the table.<\/p>\n
"I had seen it before."<\/p>\n
I stared at her.<\/p>\n
"Where?"<\/p>\n
She didn't answer.<\/p>\n
I could see that she was struggling.<\/p>\n
I wanted to be patient.<\/p>\n
I wanted to remember that she had been my friend for thirty-seven years.<\/p>\n
But I was also tired of being the person who knew the least.<\/p>\n
I had spent my life trusting her.<\/p>\n
Now I needed her to trust me enough to tell me what she knew.<\/p>\n
"Emily, please."<\/p>\n
She looked up.<\/p>\n
"I'm sorry."<\/p>\n
I closed my eyes.<\/p>\n
I didn't want another apology.<\/p>\n
I wanted the truth.<\/p>\n
I wanted to know why Daniel had sent money to someone connected to our old house.<\/p>\n
I wanted to know why Emily had known enough to keep the records.<\/p>\n
And I wanted to know why she had waited until after Daniel died to tell me.<\/p>\n
I looked down at the photograph on my phone.<\/p>\n
Emily and I were sitting together by the ocean.<\/p>\n
She was smiling.<\/p>\n
I was smiling.<\/p>\n
It looked like a normal picture.<\/p>\n
A picture of two old friends.<\/p>\n
I thought about the way she had called it our last photograph as best friends.<\/p>\n
I had laughed.<\/p>\n
I had assumed she was being dramatic.<\/p>\n
Now I understood that she had been trying to prepare me for something.<\/p>\n
I looked at her.<\/p>\n
"Is there anything else I should know?"<\/p>\n
Emily was silent.<\/p>\n
I waited.<\/p>\n
She looked toward the window.<\/p>\n
Then she turned back to me.<\/p>\n
"There is something else."<\/p>\n
I felt my stomach tighten.<\/p>\n
I didn't ask her to continue.<\/p>\n
I just waited.<\/p>\n
Source: kaylestore.net<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n I spent the rest of the morning looking through the documents. Emily stayed beside me. She didn't try to stop me. She didn't tell me what to think. She simply … <\/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-10683","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\/10683","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=10683"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/onesharedstory.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10683\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10691,"href":"https:\/\/onesharedstory.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10683\/revisions\/10691"}],"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=10683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onesharedstory.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onesharedstory.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nClick here to continue reading: PART 8: The Secret Had Been Waiting in the Past for Years, and I Was Finally Ready to Hear What Emily Had to Say<\/a><\/strong><\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"