After burying my wife, I finally unlocked the barn she had never allowed me to enter. For 37 years, it had been sealed off, a place she insisted held nothing but old tools and useless clutter. I expected dust, silence, and memories long forgotten.

I thought about opening it, but I could not. Not right now. Not when my hands were still shaking and my mind was still reeling from that one name.

Brian.

I set the box back in the drawer and closed it carefully. Then I picked up the journal again and stared at the first page, at her words, at that name. I wanted to stop. I wanted to walk out of the shed and lock the door behind me and pretend I had never opened it.

But I knew I could not do that.

I knew I had to keep reading. I had to know the truth no matter how much it hurt.

I took a deep breath.

And then I turned the page.

The second page began with a date. Forty years ago. Long before we were married. Long before I ever met her.

And the first sentence read:

I was eighteen when I got pregnant.

I felt the air leave my lungs.

Brian.

The name meant nothing to me, but as I turned the page and kept reading, my entire world began to fall apart.

Brenda was eighteen years old when she got pregnant. I was twenty-six at the time, working on a farm three counties away. We had not even met yet.