Twenty years ago, my wife disappeared, leaving behind only a note that read, “I hope you’ll forgive me someday.” I spent two decades searching for meaning in those words. I never imagined I’d find part of the answer in the produce aisle of a grocery store.

Last Monday, while picking out fruit, I noticed a young woman—maybe nineteen or twenty—carefully inspecting apples. There was something about her that tugged at memory. Then the light caught the silver locket around her neck, and my breath stopped.

It was small and oval, with a green stone slightly off-center—and a faint scratch along the side from the day my wife, Lucy, snagged it on a car door. I had given her that locket on our fifth anniversary. She never took it off.

I approached the young woman, trying to keep steady. “I’m sorry to bother you… but where did you get that locket?”

She instinctively touched it. “It was my mom’s.”

Everything around me blurred.

To understand what happened next, you need the past.

Lucy and I had been together since we were seventeen. We married after college and built what I thought was a steady, happy life. Then one September morning, the police called. Her car had been found near an old bridge—door open, no sign of struggle. On the passenger seat was a note in her handwriting:

“I hope you will forgive me someday.”

Seven words. No explanation.

The case was eventually labeled a voluntary disappearance. People told me to move on. I never did. The word forgive suggested there was something to explain.

Back in the store, I asked the young woman her mother’s name.

“Lucy,” she said.

Then she left quickly, and without thinking, I followed from a distance. She walked into a quiet neighborhood and entered a pale blue house. After wrestling with myself, I knocked.

She answered the door, startled. “Dad, it’s him!” she called.

A man in his late fifties stepped forward, cautious. Behind him, framed photos covered the wall.

Lucy. Older, laughing. Holding a baby.

Relief hit first—she had been alive.

Then something heavier: she had built an entire life without me.

The man introduced himself as Jacob. He said he met Lucy while she volunteered at a youth center. She had confided that she was unhappy, especially during the months I traveled for work. She became pregnant—with his child.

Lucy had chosen to leave rather than tell me.

Jacob brought out a worn diary Lucy had carried with her. In it, she wrote that she couldn’t bring herself to confess the pregnancy. She feared my anger, my disappointment. Instead of facing the truth, she chose to disappear—believing it would hurt less than watching me absorb the betrayal.

I asked where she was.

Jacob lowered his eyes. “She passed away three years ago. Can:cer.”

Lucy had lived six states away, raising a daughter named Betty. She legally changed her name to avoid being found. Before she died, she told Jacob not to contact me—but to say she was sorry if I ever came looking.

Betty removed the locket and handed it to me. “I didn’t know what it meant,” she said quietly. “I just knew she loved it.”

I closed my hand around it.

“She was your mother,” I told her. “Whatever happened, don’t let this take that from you.”

It’s been a week since I learned the truth. The locket now sits on my nightstand. I don’t know if anger fits what I feel. And forgiveness—well, I’m not sure what it means when the person asking for it isn’t here anymore.

Lucy made a choice I’ll never fully understand.

And somewhere in Oregon, there’s a young woman who lost her mother three years ago—and only just discovered that her story was more complicated than she knew.

After twenty years of searching, I finally have answers.

I’m just not sure they made anything easier.