I met Tatum. She was Daphne’s opposite—practical, grounded, realistic. At the time, that felt safe. We dated, married, and built a dependable life: two kids, a dog, a mortgage, school events, camping trips.
It wasn’t a bad life. Just a different one.
Tatum and I divorced when I was forty-two. No betrayal. No explosion. Just the quiet realization that we’d become roommates instead of partners.Memory box creation
We split everything evenly and hugged goodbye in the lawyer’s office. Rhys and Clover were old enough to understand, and thankfully, they grew up just fine.
Still, Daphne never truly left.
Every holiday season, I wondered about her—if she was happy, if she remembered those early promises, if she’d ever fully let me go.
Some nights, I could still hear her laugh.
Then last year, everything shifted.
I was searching the attic for Christmas decorations on a bitter afternoon when I reached for an old yearbook. A thin, faded envelope slipped loose and landed at my feet.
Yellowed. Soft around the edges. My full name written in that familiar slanted handwriting.
Hers.
I sat there among tangled garlands and broken ornaments and opened it with shaking hands.Name history book
Dated December 1991.
I had never seen this letter.
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