For fifty-two years of marriage, my wife kept our attic locked tight. I trusted her every time she said it was nothing but old junk. After all that time, I never imagined that breaking that lock would unravel everything I thought I knew about my family.
I’m not someone who usually writes on the internet. I’m seventy-six years old, retired Navy, and my grandkids still tease me for typing with two fingers. But what happened a couple of weeks ago shook me in a way I don’t have words for, and I can’t carry it alone anymore.
My name is Gerald—most people call me Gerry. My wife, Martha, and I have been married for over half a century. We raised three children together. Now we’ve got seven grandkids who fill our house with noise and laughter whenever they visit. I truly believed that after all these years, I knew every corner of Martha’s heart. I thought there were no surprises left.
We live in an old Victorian house in Vermont, the kind that creaks and groans like it’s alive. We bought it back in 1972, when the kids were still small. Ever since we moved in, there’s been one place I’ve never seen: the attic. The door at the top of the stairs has always been sealed with a heavy brass padlock.
Whenever I asked about it, Martha brushed me off with the same gentle dismissals.
“It’s just junk, Gerry. Old furniture from my parents’ place.”
“Nothing worth fussing over.”
“Just dusty boxes and moth-eaten clothes.”
I believed her. I never went snooping through my wife’s things. Everyone deserves their private corners, don’t they? Still, after decades of walking past that locked door, curiosity had quietly taken root.
Two weeks ago, everything changed.
Martha was in the kitchen baking her famous apple pie for our grandson’s birthday when she slipped on some water near the sink. I heard her cry out from the living room and rushed in to find her crumpled on the floor, clutching her hip.
“I think it’s broken,” she whispered, tears running down her face.
The ambulance arrived fast. Surgery followed. The doctors said she’d fractured her hip in two places. At seventy-five, recovery isn’t quick. She was sent to a care facility for rehab, and for the first time in decades, I came home to an empty house.
The silence was unbearable. No humming from the kitchen. No footsteps behind me. I visited her every day, but the nights felt endless.
