The next item was a faded blue notebook. Every page was about me. Margaret had written about the day we met, saying I smiled politely but watched every exit. She noticed I pretended not to be hungry. She noticed I thanked her too many times for small things because I was used to receiving nothing. (by:https://best-food.ciifood.com)
I spent years faking a marriage to a 71-year-old widow, counting down the days until I could inherit her wealth. But after her funeral, when her family laughed that I got absolutely nothing, her attorney handed me an old shoebox and said, “She told me this is what you truly wanted.”
I had spent years believing I was using her. But the more I read, the less certain I became. She had not been recording my lies. She had been recording my pain.
Near the end, her handwriting grew shaky. Her final entries were smaller and softer. She wrote about hearing me laugh while fixing the fence and hoping I would hear that laugh more often. Then came the sentence that broke me: “I don’t think Caleb knows he deserves to be loved. Maybe someday he will.”