He wrote: “I wish I could trade bodies with her and take all this pain away.”
I moved to the next journal. Then the next one. Page after page about us. About our stupid fights over nothing. Our inside jokes that nobody else understood. My chronic migraines. His irrational fear of flying. Holidays with family. Money struggles.
There was no mention of another woman anywhere.
No secret children. No double life hidden in these pages.
When the truth started revealing itself
By the time I reached the sixth journal, my eyes were burning from strain and unshed tears.
Halfway through that volume, the tone of his entries changed noticeably. The writing got darker, more frustrated.
He wrote: “Susan pushing again. Wants us locked into a three-year contract. Quality slipping badly. Last shipment was contaminated. People in the office actually got sick.”
The next entry: “Told her we’re done with her company. She completely lost it. Screamed that I was deliberately ruining her business.”
Then: “Our lawyer says we could sue her for the bad products. We’d probably win. But she has two kids to support. I don’t want to take food off their table, even if she did wrong by us.”
Under that, written in heavier, more emphatic ink: “I’ll let the legal matter go. But I won’t forget what she’s capable of when she’s angry.”
I sat there on the bedroom floor, journal open in my lap, hands shaking with a mixture of relief and rage.
Two kids. Her kids. Not his.
What if there were no secret children at all?
What if Susan had walked into my grief and decided that my pain wasn’t sufficient punishment for ending her contract?
Getting help to uncover the real story
I picked up my phone and called Peter.
Peter was Greg’s closest friend from work. He’d been to our house at least three times already since the funeral, fixing things that didn’t actually need fixing because he didn’t know what else to do with his own grief and helplessness.
He answered on the first ring. “Ev? You okay?”
“I need your help with something. And I need you to believe me when I tell you what happened.”
I told him absolutely everything. The note tucked in the casket. The security camera footage. What Susan had claimed in front of everyone. What I’d discovered in Greg’s journal entries.
He went completely quiet on the other end.
“Peter?” I whispered, suddenly afraid he thought I was losing my mind.
“I believe you,” he said finally, his voice firm and certain. “I knew Ray for twenty years. If he’d had children with someone else, he wouldn’t have been able to hide it from me. He was the worst liar I’ve ever met in my life.”
A weak, broken laugh escaped me despite everything.
“I’ll help you find out what’s real,” he promised. “You deserve to know the truth.”
Sending someone to confront Susan directly
The following afternoon, Peter sent his son Ben to help.
“I’ll lose my temper completely if I go myself,” Peter admitted to me on the phone. “Ben’s much calmer and more levelheaded.”
Ben was seventeen years old. Tall, polite, a little awkward in that endearing teenage way. He stopped by my house first before going to Susan’s.
“I can back out of this if you want,” he offered, clearly uncomfortable with the whole situation. “You don’t owe anyone proof of anything.”
“I owe it to myself,” I told him firmly. “And I owe it to Greg’s memory.”
Peter had already dug up Susan’s home address from old vendor paperwork in Greg’s files. Ben drove over there alone.
When he came back about an hour later, we sat across from each other at my kitchen table. My hands were wrapped tightly around a mug of tea that I wasn’t actually drinking.
