I snapped a picture of the paused frame.

“Thank you,” I told Luis.

“You left something in my husband’s casket.”

Then I walked back to the chapel.

Susan was near the back, talking to two women from Greg’s office. Tissue in her hand, eyes red, like she was the grieving widow in some alternate universe.

When she saw me coming, her expression flickered. Just for a second. Guilt.

I stopped right in front of her. “You left something in my husband’s casket.”

Susan blinked. “What?”

“I watched you do it on camera. Don’t lie to me.”

“Who are the kids, Susan?”

“I… I just wanted to say goodbye,” she whispered.

“Then you could’ve done it like everyone else. You hid it under his hands. Why?”

People around us were listening. I could feel it.

Susan’s chin trembled. “I didn’t mean for you to find it.”

I pulled the note from my purse and held it up. “Who are the kids, Susan?”

For a moment, I thought she’d faint. Then she gave a tiny nod.

“He didn’t want you to see them.”

“They’re his,” she said. “They’re Greg’s kids.”

A buzz went through the people nearby. Someone gasped.

“You’re saying my husband has children with you?” I asked.

She swallowed. “Two. A boy and a girl.”

“You’re lying.”

“I’m not. He didn’t want to hurt you. He told me not to bring them. He didn’t want you to see them.”

My humiliation was suddenly a group activity.

Every word felt like it was aimed right between my ribs. I looked around at all the eyes on us. Friends, neighbors, coworkers. My humiliation was suddenly a group activity.

I couldn’t stay. I couldn’t scream in front of Greg’s casket.

So I did the only thing I could.

I turned and walked out.

I’d never read them.

***

After the burial, the house felt like a stranger’s.

His shoes were still by the door. His mug on the counter. His glasses on the nightstand.

I sat on the edge of our bed and stared at the closet shelf.

Eleven journals in a neat row. Greg’s handwriting on the spines.

“Helps me think,” he’d say.

I’d never read them. It felt like opening his head.

I pulled down the first journal and opened it.

But Susan’s words were echoing: “Two. A boy and a girl.”

I pulled down the first journal and opened it.

The first entry was a week after our wedding. He wrote about our terrible honeymoon motel. The broken air conditioner. My laugh.

I flipped through the pages.

Page after page about us.

He wrote about our first fertility appointment. Me crying in the car.

He wrote, “I wish I could trade bodies with her and take this pain.”

I went to the next journal. Then the next. Page after page about us. About our fights. Our inside jokes. My migraines. His fear of flying. Holidays. Bills.

No mention of another woman.

No secret kids. No double life.

The writing got darker.

By the time I reached the sixth journal, my eyes burned.

Halfway through, the tone changed. The writing got darker.

He wrote: “Susan pushing again. Wants us locked in for three years. Quality slipping. Last shipment bad. People got sick.”

Next entry: “Told her we’re done. She lost it. Said I was ruining her business.”

Next: “Could sue. Lawyer says we’d win. But she has 2 kids. Don’t want to take food off their table.”

What if there were no secret children?

Under that, in heavier ink: “I’ll let it go. But I won’t forget what she’s capable of.”

I sat there on the bed, journal open, hands shaking.

Two kids. Her kids. Not his.

What if there were no secret children?

What if she’d walked into my grief and decided it wasn’t enough?

I picked up my phone and called Peter.

I told him everything.

Peter was Greg’s closest friend from work. He’d been at the house three times already, fixing things that weren’t broken because he didn’t know what else to do.

He answered fast. “Ev?”

“I need your help. And I need you to believe me.”

I told him everything. The note. The cameras. What Susan had said. What I’d read in the journal. He went quiet.

“Peter?” I whispered.

“I’ll help you find out what’s real.”

“I believe you,” he said finally. “I knew Ray. If he’d had kids with someone else, he wouldn’t have been able to hide it. He was a terrible liar.”

A weak laugh escaped me.

“I’ll help you find out what’s real,” he said. “You deserve that.”

***

The following afternoon, he sent his son, Ben.

“I’ll lose my temper if I go,” Peter told me. “Ben’s calmer.”

“You don’t owe anyone proof.”

Ben was 17. Tall, polite, a little awkward. He stopped by my house first.

“I can back out if you want,” he said. “You don’t owe anyone proof.”

“I owe it to myself. And to Greg.”

Peter had already dug up Susan’s address from old vendor paperwork. Ben drove over.

When he came back an hour later, we sat at my kitchen table. My hands were wrapped around a mug of tea I wasn’t drinking.

“This girl opened the door. Teenager.”

“Tell me everything,” I said.

“So,” he said, “I knocked. This girl opened the door. Teenager. Pajama pants, messy bun. I asked for her dad.”

I pictured it as he talked.

“She yelled for him,” Ben went on. “Guy in his 50s comes to the door. I told him, ‘I’m here because of something your wife said at a funeral yesterday.’”

“She knew something was wrong right away.”

Ben swallowed. “I told him she said she’d had an affair with Greg. That her kids were Greg’s.”

I winced.

“He just… froze,” Ben said. “Then he yelled for Susan. She came out with a dish towel in her hand. Saw me. Saw him. She knew something was wrong right away.”

“What did she say?”

“She denied it,” he said. “Said I was lying. I told her I’d heard her with my own ears.”

“Why did she say she did it?”

“And then?”

“Her husband asked again,” Ben said. “He looked… broken. He said, ‘Did you tell people our kids aren’t mine?’”

Ben stared at the table.

“She snapped,” he said. “She yelled, ‘Fine, I said it, okay?’”

I closed my eyes. “Why did she say she did it?”

“I wanted her to hurt.”

“She said Greg ruined her life,” Ben replied. “Said he complained that she’d lost contracts, her company went under. She said she went to the funeral to hurt you. That she wanted you to feel crazy the way she felt.”

“She said the kids are actually his?” I whispered.

“No. She said they’re her husband’s. She only used Greg’s name to get revenge. Those were her words. ‘It was just words. I wanted her to hurt.’”

My eyes stung.

Just a bitter woman who decided my grief wasn’t enough punishment.

Ben added quietly, “Her daughter was crying. Her husband looked like someone had kicked him in the chest.”

Silence settled between us.

So there it was. No secret family. No double life. Just a bitter woman who decided my grief wasn’t enough punishment. I pressed my palms to my eyes and started to sob.

When I finally calmed, Ben said, “My dad always said Ray was the most loyal guy he knew. For what it’s worth.”

“It’s worth a lot,” I said.

I grabbed an empty notebook from my nightstand.

After he left, I went back upstairs and picked up Greg’s journal again.

“I’ll let it go. But I won’t forget what she’s capable of.”

“Neither will I,” I said.

I sat on the floor, grabbed an empty notebook from my nightstand, and opened it to the first page.

If Susan could write lies and tuck them into my husband’s hands, I could write the truth and keep it with me.

My marriage wasn’t a lie.

So I started. About Greg. About the rose. About the note. About the cameras. About Luis, Peter, and Ben. About a woman who walked into a funeral and tried to bury a good man twice. I don’t know what I’ll do with it yet.

But I know this: My marriage wasn’t a lie.

My husband was flawed and human and stubborn and sometimes annoying. But he was mine.

And even after everything, when I turn the pages of those journals, one thing is always there, over and over, in the margins and the little lines between his thoughts.

“I love her.”

He never hid that.

“I love her.”