**The Secret in the Bathroom**
My name is Eleanor Mitchell. I am seventy-eight years old, and for thirty-five years of my marriage, I lived with a mystery that nearly broke me.
Every single morning at exactly 4:00 a.m., my husband Richard would slip out of our bed like a ghost. He never made a sound. He would walk down the creaky hallway of our modest brick house in South Chicago, enter the small bathroom near the laundry room, and lock the door behind him. For nearly an hour, he stayed in there. Sometimes I heard the soft hiss of running water. Sometimes the faint clink of medicine bottles. Sometimes a muffled groan that sounded like a man trying to swallow his own pain.
For thirty-five years, I never truly knew why.
—
It started innocently enough in the early days of our marriage. We were young, poor, and deeply
in love. I met Richard in the spring of 1969 at a church fundraiser in Gary, Indiana. He was twenty-five, tall and strong from working at the steel fabrication plant. I was twenty-two, shy, and still terrified of my father’s strict Baptist rules. Richard had a quiet strength that made me feel safe. When he proposed six months later, I said yes without hesitation.
