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Retreating to a quiet, anonymous restroom, my hands trembled as I finally unfolded the small, clandestine note. The handwriting was disturbingly neat, yet utterly unfamiliar, a stranger’s script in the intimate space of my grief. The words on the paper swam before my eyes, then slammed into my consciousness with a force that stole my breath: a declaration of “love that could not be lived openly,” followed by a chilling, impossible mention of “our children.” My heart, already shattered, seized in my chest, every beat a painful throb of disbelief. Greg and I had yearned for children for years, enduring that specific sorrow together, a private grief that bonded us even tighter. This note, this foreign, cruel message, dared to suggest a hidden life, a secret family, a betrayal so profound it threatened to erase every single memory of the man I had loved and trusted for nearly four decades. The quiet, loyal companion who had been my entire world. The words painted a portrait of a double life I simply could not reconcile with the steadfast man I believed I knew, leaving me adrift in a terrifying sea of doubt and an overwhelming, desperate need for the truth, no matter how devastating it might be.
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