And so, my love, we have come to the end of our lives together. Your bones are moldering in a charred grave somewhere in the French countryside and I am moving through the world, truly free for the first time in my long life. My nights are full of long walks and the scent of ocean breezes and the sound of people singing. Sometimes, I hear your voice in my dreams and I wake with a start, but I’m getting better at soothing myself back to sleep these days. Perhaps in time I will stop asking God for His forgiveness. Perhaps I will be able to uncurl the defenses around my heart and let someone see me the way you saw me: vulnerable and naked and totally trusting.

I have one final promise to make to you, one I hope I will never break. I promise to live, richly and shamelessly and with my arms wide open to the world. If there was any part left of you at the end that wished for our great happiness, that truly wanted what was best for us, I think it would be pleased to hear me say it. I do not know if I have justified my choice to you, but I think I have justified it to myself, and that has brought me peace enough.

So I will put down my pen. I will tuck these pages away in a drawer and tuck the memories of you away in my mind, and I will go out into the world and live. I will build an undying family of my own, and there will be no raised voices or locked doors between us. Your memory will fade to shadow and I shall never speak your name again, not even when I tell my lovers the story of how we two met. There will only be sweetness and kindheartedness, and a hundred years of bliss.