I rolled up the door of unit 31, my heart pounding, and the light fell on a long table, and on it, forty-four 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 Walters 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.
Real particular that no one be added but him, the man had said, and now I understood, my Walter was wrapping a surprise meant to unfold for the rest of my life, and a man who could not keep a Christmas gift quiet had to lock it away from his own blabbing self.
My Walter had made me an anniversary present for every single year of our marriage, forty-four 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, marked for this year, our first apart. Inside was a small framed photo of us on our wedding day, 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-four more years if you make it that far, and knowing you, you will. I hid these here and told the folks to add nobody but me, because you know I would have given the whole thing away by Thanksgiving. I love you today as much as the day I married you. More. Love, Walter.
Forty-four boxes. Forty-four years of anniversaries, planned and wrapped and waiting, 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.
Particular that no one be added, so the surprise would keep, and I would never spend an anniversary without him.
I brought the boxes home. They sit in my closet, forty-three 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 Walter will be there, with a gift and a letter and his love.
My daughter did not know why I drove out to Route 11. Now she knows her daddy left me forty-four years of anniversaries. Particular that no one be added, 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. My devoted Walter.