And I’m standing at the edge of the group, holding a little girl’s hand.
Sometimes I look at those photographs and think about how much life can change in a single year.
I lost my husband.
I discovered
that my oldest friend had kept a secret for more than four decades.
I learned that Robert had known something I hadn’t.
And for a while, I wondered whether any of the relationships I’d trusted were what I believed them to be.
But time taught me something unexpected.
A secret can change the way you understand the past without erasing every good thing that happened within it.
Susan’s silence hurt me.
Robert’s decision hurt me too.
Forgiving them didn’t mean pretending those choices were harmless.
It meant accepting that people
can love us deeply and still make mistakes.
Susan and I still talk about what happened.
Sometimes those conversations are difficult.
Sometimes I ask questions she wishes I’d asked years earlier.
But we no longer hide the uncomfortable parts of our lives from each other.
And every summer, we return to the same beach.
We sit beneath the same umbrella.
We watch the waves.
And we take another photograph.
Last summer, Susan looked at me and smiled.
“Remember when I thought that would be our last picture together?”
I laughed.
“
How could I forget?”
