My name is Russell. Most folks call me Russ. I’ve been married to my wife, Helen, for 52 years. We raised three children together in a creaky old Victorian house in Vermont, one of those tall, narrow places with steep stairs, drafty windows, and floorboards that complain about every step. We have seven grandchildren now. On holidays, the house fills with noise and laughter, and for a few hours, it feels young again.
For more than half a century, I believed I knew everything there was to know about my wife. Not that I thought she didn’t have private thoughts or old memories. Of course she did. But I believed I understood the shape of her life, both before and after me.
I was wrong.
At the top of the staircase in our house, there has always been a narrow door leading to the attic. From the day we moved in, that door had a brass padlock on it. It wasn’t a flimsy thing. It was heavy and solid, the kind of lock that looked as though it belonged on a warehouse.
The first time I asked Helen about it, she smiled and said, “Just old junk from my parents’ house. Nothing worth digging through.”
Over the years, I brought it up now and then, mostly teasing. “One of these days I’m going to find treasure up there.”
“You’ll find dust and regret,” she would reply lightly. “Leave it be, Russ.”
And I did. I’ve never been the kind of man to rifle through my wife’s belongings. We all deserve a corner of the world that is ours alone. So I accepted her explanation: old furniture, boxes, moth-eaten coats.
