We had 42 good years together. Martha was a wonderful wife and a loving mother to our kids. I loved her, and I never told her about Margaret. It was a private drawer in my mind that I kept locked.

But Martha passed away five years ago, and I was left alone with my memories.

And now, here was Margaret, sitting across from me at a laminate folding table in a church basement.

She didn’t look angry. She just looked incredibly sad.

“I can’t believe it’s you,” I managed to say. My hands were shaking so badly I dropped my red bingo marker.

Lily looked between the two of us, her eyes wide with confusion. “Pop? Do you know her?”

Margaret smiled at Lily. “Your grandfather and I knew each other a long time ago, dear.”

Then, she did something that made my stomach drop.

She reached into her purse and pulled out a blue bingo card. She slid it across the table toward me.

On the back of the card, written in shaky, elegant blue ink, was a phone number.

Beneath the number, she had written one sentence.

“I never opened your letters because your mother told me you married my cousin Martha before you even shipped out. She said you both laughed at me.”

I stared at the words. I couldn’t breathe. My chest felt like it was being squeezed by a metal band.

Martha was Margaret’s cousin. A second cousin, actually. They had different last names, and their families had a falling out years before I ever met either of them.

I never knew. Nobody ever told me.

My mother had set the whole thing up.

“Margaret, that’s not true,” I choked out, looking up from the card. “I didn’t marry Martha until three years later. I wrote you. I wanted you.”

Margaret’s blue eyes filled with tears.

“I know,” she whispered. “I found out the truth only a few years ago. My aunt told me before she passed.”

“Pop?” Lily asked, reaching for my arm. “What’s going on?”

“Lily, honey, I need to step outside,” I said, pushing my chair back. The metal legs scraped loudly against the linoleum floor.

Margaret stood up too. She left her bingo cards on the table.

We walked out of the senior center together, leaving Lily staring after us.

We sat on a green wooden bench in the small park next to the church. The afternoon air was cool, smelling of damp leaves and autumn.

Margaret told me what happened after I left for camp.

My mother had gone to the dairy parlor. She told Margaret that I had run off with Martha and married her in a quick chapel wedding.

She told Margaret that we had laughed about how easy she was to fool.