Page 135 of Lovely Darkness

“What’s it say?” she asked.

“The truth.” Then I looked at her and said exactly what Sasha said to me the night before. “The truth is the cure.”

Wendy nodded her head. Kinda bobbed it a little. Looked out the window for a while. Held the envelope in her hand. Then she said, “Do you have a pen?”

“Glove box.”

She found the pen, scribbled something on the envelope, and then said, “Pull over.”

And that was it. I thought, OK. She’s leaving again. Same shit, different day. Then I rallied. It’s fine. I can do this. We’ll get through it.

Wendy got out of the truck, and I watched her, curious, as she walked over to a mail box. She looked over her shoulder at me and smiled. Then opened the box and dropped the envelope inside.

When she got back in the truck I said, “What did you just do?”

“I mailed myself the letter.”

“Why?”

“Because someone told me once that truth is something you seek, it’s not something that’s told to you. Which is kind of ironic, since you told me that, so I can’t take it as truth. But you gotta start somewhere, I guess.”

I chuckled a little.

“So I’m running an experiment.”

“Ya are?”

“Mmhm. I’m mailing myself that letter because I have that big old mail box, right?”

“Right.”

“So no matter how long we’re gone, it’s gonna get there, and it’s gonna wait for me, same way all those other ones do. Right?”

“Right.”

“So I figure it’s about time for us to go do that whole honeymoon world tour thing, don’t you think?”

I didn’t know what to say. I wasn’t expecting that. I was expecting… I dunno. Road trips to libraries. Some yelling and crying about that damn cure. Maybe another stint out to the sunflowers.

“Right?” she pressed.

“Right,” I agreed.

“So let’s do that.”

“I don’t get it.” I looked over at her, questioning everything.

“What’s not to get?”

Well. All of it, I wanted to say. But instead, I said, “What’s the experiment?”

“The experiment is… what came first? The truth or the telling?”

I was at a red light. So I stared at her. Hard, too. “Wendy Gale. That is fuckin’ profound.”

“Right?” She laughed. “I don’t need your letter, Nick Tate. I will find my own truth, thank you. And then, once I do, we can go home. And that will be the proper time to read that letter.”

I wanted to say more. I wanted to prepare her. I wanted to… I dunno, absolve myself, I guess. But those were all selfish things. In the same vein of how people tell their partners they’ve been cheating.