I rolled up the door of unit 63, dreading heartbreak, and the light fell on a long table, and on it, forty-three small boxes, each one numbered and wrapped in careful paper, and a rocking chair beside them, and a note propped where I would see it first.
The note was in my Bills hand. It said: Old girl, one box for every year we had. Open one on each anniversary after I am gone. I could not stand the thought of you facing those days alone.
Only came at night, the young man had said, and now I understood, my Bill had been wrapping these in the quiet dark after I slept, a little at a time over years, because a man cannot prepare forty-three secret anniversary gifts with his wife in the next room.
My Bill had made me an anniversary present for every single year of our marriage, forty-three boxes, one to be opened on each anniversary after his death, so that even gone, he would have a gift waiting for me every year for the rest of my life.
I opened the first one, the one marked for this year, our first apart. Inside was a small framed photo of us on our wedding day, and a letter, and a little bottle of the perfume I wore when we met, which they stopped making decades ago and which he had somehow hunted down.
His letter said: Happy anniversary, old girl. I know this one is the hardest. I am sorry I cannot hand you this myself. But I am with you. I will be with you every anniversary, one box at a time, for forty-three more years if you make it that far, and knowing you, you will. I came at night to wrap these so you would never catch me. I love you today as much as the day I married you. More. Love, Bill.
Forty-three boxes. Forty-three years of anniversaries, planned and wrapped and waiting in the dark, so I would never face our day alone.
I sat in that rocking chair, which I understood now he had put there for me, and I held the first gift and wept and felt, for the first time since he passed, not entirely alone.
Only at night, so the surprise would keep. My Bill had reached past his own death to hold my hand on every anniversary to come.
I brought the boxes home. They sit in my closet, forty-two of them still wrapped, one opened each year on our day. I do not know if I will live to open them all. But I know that for every anniversary I have left, my Bill will be there, with a gift and a letter and his love.
My daughter did not know why I drove across town. Now she knows her daddy left me forty-three years of anniversaries. Only at night, so I would never catch him loving me that far into the future. I open one every year. He is never really gone. He saw to that, working quietly in the dark.