And mixed into the stack were Helen’s own letters, including an envelope from an oncology clinic dated two months before she died.

My wife had been coming here. Not once. Not occasionally. Regularly.

I picked up the clinic envelope. Clearwater Medical Center. Oncology Services. Appointment Confirmation. Helen had told me those appointments were routine.

She’d looked exhausted, yes, but she blamed grief, age, sleepless nights, the weather — everything except illness. Fifteen years earlier, when cancer first entered our lives, we fought it together.

The appointments. The nausea. The scarves folded neatly on the dresser. The nights she cried in the bathroom so Bradley wouldn’t hear. I had believed we survived it side by side.

Now I held proof that she’d faced its return without me.