After my husband passed away, I had to go through his things.

While cleaning out his car, I found a garage door opener in the glove compartment. It was strange because we didn’t have a garage that needed one, and his work didn’t use one either. I thought maybe it was just a mistake or something he forgot about.

But I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Weeks later, I decided to drive around our neighborhood while pressing the opener, just to see if it worked somewhere. To my surprise, the opener worked on a garage at the corner of the street. My heart started beating fast as the door opened slowly, revealing a dark space. Inside, I found an old car covered in dust and some boxes in the corner.

I opened one of the boxes, expecting to find tools or random things. But instead, I found letters—lots of them—all addressed to my husband from a woman I had never heard of. The letters were from years ago and were full of details about a life I knew nothing about. As I read through them, I realized my husband had a secret life he had kept from me for years.