After My Mother’s Funeral, I Found Letters From My First Love in Her Closet—And the Truth Shattered Everything.

grass was still too tall. The town had changed, but the sunset looked almost the same.

She slipped her hand into mine.

“Do you ever wonder what life would’ve been like?” she asked.

“Every day,” I said.

“Me too.”

I looked at her, at the lines around her eyes, at the smile I had carried in my memory for more than three decades.

Then I shook my head.

“But I continue reading …