“If you are hearing this, you are the woman who stayed. I never knew your name, but I knew someone would have to love my boy through the hard years. I am grateful, and you were never in my way.” My second wife wept silently as she listened. Then she reached for my hand, and we stayed there together until the tape ran out.

The next morning, she asked me to frame my first wife’s pie-crust recipe. She hung it in our kitchen herself. I realized then that my first wife had never recorded that message to compete with the life we built afterward. She had recorded it to bless it. And somehow, after all those years, her final song gave both of us permission to stop carrying the guilt of moving forward.