I whispered:
“Why keep all this?”
Samuel pointed toward the drafting table.
I unrolled the plans.
A house.
Small.
One story.
White exterior.
Blue shutters.
Three bedrooms.
A porch across the front.
I laughed through tears.
“You idiot.”
There was another note.
Written only six months earlier.
Margaret,
Before you become angry, this house does not exist.
I laughed harder.
Walter knew me.
I never built our house. I drew it. There is a difference.
Joan deserved a husband who lived in the house he actually shared with her, not one secretly building a monument to another woman.
That sentence mattered.
Walter had loved his wife.
I was grateful for that.
But after Joan died, I found these drawings again. I kept wondering why I had saved them.
Then I realized I wasn’t saving the house.
I was saving the question.
What would have happened if we’d been allowed to choose for ourselves?
