I rolled up the door of unit 63, dreading what waited, and the light fell on a desk, a lamp, a comfortable chair, and stacks and stacks of paper, and an old typewriter, and I stepped closer to see what my Bill had been doing out here in the dark for sixteen years.
The top page read: Our Life, by a lucky man.
Only came at night, the young man had said, and now I understood, my Bill wrote in the quiet after I fell asleep, coming out here where nothing would interrupt him, because a man cannot write the story of his marriage with his wife in the next room.
My Bill, who could not keep a secret to save his life, who I thought had not a literary bone in him, had been secretly writing a book, the story of our whole life together, four hundred pages of it, in the quiet of the night.
I sat down in his chair and began to read, and there was our whole life on the page, in his plain honest voice. The day we met at the church picnic. How terrified he was to ask me out. Our wedding. The night our first was born. The lean years and the good ones. Every chapter a piece of us.
He had written a chapter about my mothers passing, and how he held me. A chapter about our daughters wedding. A chapter, I could barely read it, simply titled Why I Love Her, forty-three years of reasons.
His letter was clipped to the manuscript. He wrote: Old girl, I am no writer, but somebody had to set our life down before it slipped away. I came at night because it was quiet, and because if you caught me I would have blabbed the whole thing, you know I cannot keep a secret. This one I kept, for you. I did not quite finish. Write the ending for me. You always knew it better than I did. Love, Bill.
I wept over that manuscript for a week. Then I did what he asked. I finished it. I wrote the last chapter myself, about losing him, and finding this unit, and learning how deeply I was loved.
I had the book printed, copies for our children and grandchildren. Our Life, by a lucky man, finished by a lucky woman. They treasure it. They read our whole story to their own children now.
My daughter did not know why I drove across town. Now she knows her daddy wrote us a book, in secret, in the dark. Only at night, so it would stay a surprise, and because the quiet is where the words came. He set our whole life down so it would never be forgotten. It never will be.