They say marriage is about trust. But what happens when the man you’ve shared your bed with for 43 years turns out to be someone you don’t fully know? Someone with secrets so big they could change everything?
Tom and I met when I was 22 and he was 24. We married six months later in a small ceremony in my parents’ backyard. We didn’t go for a fancy venue or fancy dresses. It was just us, promising forever with dandelions in my hair and hope in our hearts.
For over four decades, we’ve lived in the same modest three-bedroom house.
The paint has faded, the porch steps creak, but it’s home. Tom has worked as a school janitor at an elementary school since before our children were born, and I’ve been selling women’s clothing at the department store downtown for 30 years now.
We raised our two children, Michael and Sarah, with more love than money. No Disney vacations or brand-name sneakers, but plenty of camping trips and hand-me-downs.
They never complained. Now they’re grown with families of their own, doing better than we ever did.
“You two are my inspiration,” Sarah told us last Christmas. “Working hard all these years, never giving up on each other.”
If only she knew how close I’d come to giving up during those early years when the bills piled higher than our dreams. But Tom never wavered. Never complained about the long hours or the aching back that came from mopping school hallways day after day.
“It’s honest work,” he’d say. “And honesty means everything.”
That’s why, when I found the bank transfer receipt while emptying his jacket pockets for laundry last Tuesday, I couldn’t believe my eyes.
$80,000. Transferred from Thomas’s personal account to something called “Children’s Hope Foundation.”
I stared at that piece of paper until the numbers blurred. Eighty thousand dollars? We’d never had more than a few thousand in our savings account. Ever.
Where had this money come from? And what was this account I’d never heard of?