The first line was not sweet. It read: “If you are reading this, then I never found the courage to tell you the truth to your face, and I am sorry.” My hands went cold. Every fear I had carried for years, the hidden camera, the joke, the catch, rose up at once. I sank onto the floor beside the box and made myself keep reading, certain I was about to learn that the most beautiful part of my life had been a lie the entire time.

But the next lines were not what I expected either. “The truth is, the day we met at the bakery, I had just come from the worst appointment of my life. A doctor had told me something I have never told you, and I almost didn’t speak to you at all. And then you turned around, and I forgot every terrible thing for the first time in weeks.” I read it twice. The confident man who stopped women in their tracks had walked into that bakery carrying a secret, and I had never once suspected it.