After 65 Years of Marriage, I Opened My Husband’s Locked Drawer – Inside, I Found a Stack of Letters, and My Knees Buckled When I Saw Who They Were Addressed To
“You don’t have to do it alone.”
I was sorting through things, and that’s when I noticed it. One of the drawers wouldn’t open. I pulled again. Nothing.
“Jane,” I said. “Did you know about this?”
“About what?”
“This drawer. It’s locked.”
She frowned. “Dad didn’t lock his drawers.”
“That’s what I thought.”
But here it was.
Locked.
And suddenly, I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
“This drawer. It’s locked.”
Had it always been like that?
Or had he done it recently?
And why?
Honestly, I’d never noticed it before.
I rolled into our bedroom and looked for the key in the one place it could be: Martin’s favorite jacket. It was hanging in the closet, right where he’d left it.
I reached into the pocket and pulled out the keys.
I went back to the desk.
I’d never noticed it before.
Jane had followed quietly behind me, watching.
“You don’t have to open it right now.”
But I did. I couldn’t explain it, but I knew that whatever was inside that drawer mattered, although the lock gave me a bad feeling.
I slid the key in with trembling hands. Then I turned it.
The lock clicked.
Inside the drawer was a stack of neatly tied letters, dozens of them, maybe more.
That feeling about the lock was right.
“You don’t have to open it right now.”
My heart pounded against my ribs.
My first thought didn’t even make sense.
Who writes letters anymore?
My second thought made me blink a couple of times.
Who had my husband been writing to?
Then I picked one up and turned the envelope over.
And that’s when everything inside me dropped.
The name written there, I hadn’t seen it in over 50 years!
Dolly!
My heart pounded against my ribs.
For a second, I couldn’t breathe.
Dolly was my younger sister, the one I hadn’t spoken to since forever.
And now her name was sitting in my hands, in Martin’s handwriting.
“Mom?” Jane said softly behind me.
I didn’t answer because nothing about this made sense.
Martin and Dolly together?
No. That wasn’t possible.
He would have told me. My husband told me everything.
