The Impossible Return Address
Thomas stood frozen in his kitchen, coffee pooling around his slippers, staring at the envelope. The return address listed their old apartment on Maple Street. The one they'd shared for twelve years before moving to this house. The one where Margaret had painted the bathroom yellow without asking and he'd pretended to be annoyed but secretly loved it.
His hands trembled as he turned the envelope over. The postmark was smudged, but he could make out the date: October 15th. Three years and two months after her funeral.
"This is impossible," he said to the empty kitchen. The words hung in the air, unconvincing.
He thought about throwing it away. About pretending the mail carrier had made a mistake, that this was meant for someone else, anyone else. But his name was written clearly across the front in Margaret's distinctive cursive, the way she always made the 'J' in Johnson look like a swan.
Words From Beyond
Thomas carried the letter to the kitchen table, stepping over the broken mug and the spreading brown stain. His hands wouldn't stop shaking as he slid his finger beneath the flap.
The letter was two pages, written on Margaret's favorite stationery. The paper with little violets along the border that she'd ordered in bulk from a catalog company that went out of business years ago.
My dearest Thomas,
If you're reading this, then I'm gone and the lawyer I hired actually did his job. I paid him to hold this letter for three years. I wanted to give you time to grieve, to heal, to maybe even find happiness again. But I also couldn't leave without telling you the truth.
Thomas's eyes blurred. He wiped them roughly with his sleeve and kept reading.
I need you to go to the storage unit on Pine Street. Number 47. The combination is our anniversary, backward. What you find there will answer questions you didn't know you had. I'm sorry I couldn't tell you while I was alive. I was afraid you'd look at me differently. I was a coward, Thomas. But I loved you more than I ever loved my secrets.
Storage Unit 47
The storage facility smelled like dust and forgotten things. Thomas walked past rows of identical orange doors, his footsteps echoing in the concrete corridor. Unit 47 sat at the end, a padlock hanging from its latch like a question mark.
He punched in the combination: 7-1-9-1. September 17th, their wedding anniversary, reversed. The lock clicked open.
Inside, the unit was small. Maybe eight by ten feet. But it was packed with boxes, filing cabinets, and leaning against the back wall, dozens of canvases.
Thomas pulled one out into the light. It was a painting of their house, but from an angle he didn't recognize. From above, almost, like a bird's view. And it was extraordinary. The colors were vivid, the brushwork confident. In the bottom corner, a signature: M. Johnson.
He pulled out another. A portrait of him, sleeping, rendered with such tenderness that his throat tightened. Another. A stormy sea that seemed to move. Another. A field of sunflowers that practically glowed.
The Hidden Artist
There must have been a hundred paintings. Maybe more. A lifetime of work that Thomas had never seen, never even suspected.
In one of the filing cabinets, he found letters. Correspondence with galleries. Rejection letters from the early years, then acceptance letters, then offers. Large offers. From galleries in New York, London, Paris.
Margaret had turned them all down.
At the bottom of the cabinet, he found a journal. Her handwriting filled page after page.
Thomas asked about my day today. I told him I went shopping, read a book, called my sister. I didn't tell him I spent six hours painting the way light falls through our bedroom curtains. How do I explain that I have this whole other life he knows nothing about? That I've been offered my own show in Manhattan and I'm terrified to say yes? He thinks I'm just Margaret. His wife. The woman who overcooks pasta and can't parallel park. How do I tell him I'm someone else too?
Thomas sank onto a dusty crate, the journal in his hands, and finally let himself cry. Not from grief this time, but from the overwhelming realization that the woman he'd loved, the woman he'd thought he'd known completely, had been so much more than he'd ever imagined.
The letter had asked him a question without asking it: Could he have loved her if he'd known? Could he have accepted this hidden part of her?
He looked around at the paintings. At a lifetime of secret beauty. At the woman Margaret had been afraid to show him.
"Yes," he said to the empty storage unit. "I would have loved you even more."
Somewhere, somehow, he hoped she could hear him.