Three Hundred Sixty Letters And A Death Certificate That Was A Lie Chapter 01

Three Hundred Sixty Letters And A Death Certificate That Was A Lie Chapter 01

I was the woman everyone in Maple Creek called a fool waiting on a ghost.

My husband, Gavin Mercer, had left overseas for Jamouth thirty years ago.

Through 360 letters, I raised our two children and cared for Margaret Mercer, his bedridden mother, until the day she died.

After Margaret passed away, I wrote to Gavin and begged him to come home for the funeral.

I waited a month.

What arrived wasn’t Gavin, but a family photo and a bank statement showing a $300,000 balance.

[Evelyn, I’m sorry. The truth is, I never went overseas. I married Vanessa years ago in Ashford. We’ve been together all this time, but we never had the courage to tell you.]

[There’s $300,000 in the account. Consider it compensation.]

I sat alone in the yard all night, clutching the letter in my hands.

The next morning, I took a bus to Ashford and found the address written on the envelope.

It was a luxury estate.

A beautifully dressed woman watered flowers in the garden while a man wrapped his arms around her waist from behind, his eyes full of tenderness.

The moment he saw me, he froze.

“Evelyn? What are you doing here?”

That was when I finally understood—the struggle he’d talked about was a lie and being too broke to come home was a lie.

The husband I’d spent thirty years waiting for had already built a life with another woman and loved her openly for decades.

I jerked away when he tried to grab my hand and turned to run.

My vision blurred with tears.

A car hit me before I even saw it coming, then everything went black.

When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the night Gavin told me he wanted to leave.

He looked at me expectantly.

I met his gaze and spoke calmly.

“Fine. We’ll get divorced. You can take your mother and leave.”

***

The room fell silent.

Gavin’s eyes widened.

“Evelyn, what the hell is that supposed to mean?”

I let out a cold laugh.

“Exactly what I said.”

“You’ll be gone for years. Am I supposed to sit here waiting for you forever?”

“Of course not!”

His voice rose immediately and he grabbed my hand as if trying to soothe me.

“I’ll write to you every month. I’ll send back money and gifts.”

“You know I don’t want to leave you or the kids either. But if I want to give you a better life, I have to go make money.”

The candlelight reflected in his eyes. He looked so sincere.

Last time, I believed his every word and spent thirty years waiting like an idiot.

Those years were unbearably hard.

The only sweetness I had came from those monthly letters.

Whenever I couldn’t sleep, I’d take them out and read them again and again until I knew every line by heart.

Only to discover in the end that both the letters and the love were lies.

They were just poison coated in sugar.

For years, I worried about him being alone out there.

To save money and help him come home sooner, I patched the same clothes for over a decade.

My shoes wore through countless times, but I couldn’t bring myself to buy new ones.

Whenever I needed household supplies from town, I walked instead of paying for a ride.

I’d leave before sunrise and get home after dark.

While I pinched every penny, he was living comfortably with another woman.

The memory of my last life flashed before me.

As I lay trapped beneath a car, my body crushed and broken, Gavin stood beyond the crowd and looked at me from a distance.

There was pain in his eyes.

There was pity.

There was regret.

But there was no love, and no guilt.

In the end, all he did was lift a hand and cover Vanessa Hale’s eyes.

I forced myself back to the present and swallowed the disgust rising in my throat.

“This isn’t up for discussion, Gavin.”

“You make the choice.”

“Evelyn, when did you become this unreasonable?”

He slammed his hand on the table and shot to his feet.

I rose as well.

Our eyes locked and neither of us backed down.

The tension stretched tight until the door creaked open.

Vanessa peeked inside.

Her face flushed as she looked at Gavin.

“Gavin, could you help me bring some water? I’d like to take a bath.”

Gavin’s expression softened instantly.

“Sure. I’ll be right there.”

I dug my nails into my palm.

Gavin was physically weak, educated, and proud.

He never did chores around the house.

Even when I was heavily pregnant, laundry and hauling water were still my responsibility.

But whenever it came to Vanessa, he was always the first to volunteer.

The first watermelon from the summer harvest always went to her.

Whenever she had cramps, he’d go all the way into town to buy her remedies and make heating wraps for her.

When the Hale family built a new house, he left me working alone in the fields and spent his days helping them instead.

As for me? His answer was always the same.

“You can handle it. Stop being so dramatic.”

Whenever I questioned him, he’d say, “Vanessa’s my best friend’s little sister. Are you really jealous of that?”

That so-called little sister had spent thirty years sharing his bed.

And I, the wife who waited faithfully at home, didn’t learn the truth until I was dying.

In the past, I would’ve thrown a few sarcastic remarks their way.

This time, I simply watched.

I watched Gavin grab a jacket and drape it over Vanessa’s shoulders.

“It’s late. You’re barely wearing anything. What if you catch a cold?”

Then he wrapped an arm around her and led her outside.

Vanessa glanced back before leaving.

The challenge in her eyes was impossible to miss.

I shut the door, then I took out paper and a pen.

Under the glow of the kerosene lamp, I wrote a letter to my parents in Ashford.

[Dad, Mom,

I’m willing to come home and accept the future you’ve chosen for me.]

My parents had never approved of Gavin.

To them, he was just a poor country boy.

They’d begged me not to marry him.

Instead, I’d climbed over the wall in the middle of the night with my wedding dress in my hands and run straight into his arms.

When my parents finally found me, they left me with one condition.

If Gavin betrayed me within three years, I had to return to the city and marry the man they chose.

I had lost that bet.