“Still absolutely true,” he replied.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do without you,” Hannah whispered, tears streaming down her face.
“You’re going to live,” Ray said firmly.
“You hear me? You’re going to really live your life.”
He paused as if gathering courage for something difficult.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly.
“For things I should have told you a long time ago.”
Ray kissed Hannah’s forehead tenderly.
He died peacefully the following morning.
At the funeral, people kept saying the same thing.
“He was such a good man,” they repeated, as if that simple phrase captured everything.
Back at the house after the service, Mrs. Patel handed Hannah the sealed envelope.
Hannah’s name was written across the front in Ray’s blunt, recognizable handwriting.
The first line hit her like a physical blow.
“Hannah, I’ve been lying to you your whole life. I can’t take this secret with me anymore.”
Ray had written extensively about the night of the car accident.
Not the sanitized version Hannah had always believed.