January 3rd the roads finally cleared and I drove to St. Annes and sat in the last pew where Paul always sat and broke the seal on Father Mikes envelope, and the hard lump inside was a key, and the tag on it said Kettle Lake, and a lot number.
We never had a lake house. But there was a key to one in my hand, and a letter folded around it in Pauls plain hand.
He wrote that in 2019 he had bought a little cabin on Kettle Lake, two hours north, one room and a dock and a woodstove, the kind of place we had talked about for forty years and never bought because there was always the kids college, the new roof, the sensible thing. He bought it with money he had squirreled away a paycheck at a time from the paper mill, and he never told me, because he wanted it finished and perfect before he showed me, a surprise for our retirement.
The forgiveness my husband asked for was not for a betrayal at some secret lake house, it was for the years of small deceptions it took to buy me the one he had promised me our whole marriage and was afraid he would run out of time to give.
He did run out of time. The letter said the cabin was done, that he had spent three years driving up on the Saturdays I thought he was at the mill for overtime, fixing it up with his own hands, and that the guilt of lying about where he was, even for a good reason, had eaten at a man who never lied, until he had to write it all down and give it to the priest.
Forgive me for the Saturdays, Annie, he wrote. I was not with anyone. I was on a ladder at our lake house, the one you thought we would never have, hanging curtains I picked myself, which is why they are probably wrong, and you can change them.
I drove up to Kettle Lake the next weekend. The curtains were wrong. Bless him, they were plaid and orange and awful, and I sat down on the little bed and laughed and cried at the same time. I kept them. I will never change them. I sit on that dock now in the mornings, in the house my predictable husband secretly built me out of love and lies and paper mill overtime, and I forgave him before I even turned the key.