Two months after my husband Michael died, my seven-year-old daughter, Emma, called me at work crying.<\/p>\n
\u201cMommy, someone is hiding under my bed.\u201d<\/p>\n
My sister Rita was babysitting but wouldn\u2019t answer her phone. I rushed home and found Emma locked in the bathroom while Rita slept with earplugs.<\/p>\n
When I checked beneath the bed, I found a moving toy\u2014but also Rita\u2019s broken bracelet beside an opened box of Michael\u2019s belongings.<\/p>\n
The next morning, Rita confessed she had searched for letters she\u2019d written to Michael years earlier. After losing her baby, she had developed feelings for him and admitted them in writing.<\/p>\n
I feared my husband had betrayed me until I found his response.<\/p>\n
Michael had firmly rejected her, writing, \u201cI love my wife. Nothing romantic can happen between us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Relieved but furious, I told Rita she would never babysit Emma alone again and asked her to leave.<\/p>\n
Later, Emma asked if her father ever felt afraid.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m sure he did,\u201d I replied.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat did he do?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe tried to do the right thing anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even after his death, Michael\u2019s words reminded me exactly what kind of man he had been.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Two months after my husband Michael died, my seven-year-old daughter, Emma, called me at work crying. \u201cMommy, someone is hiding under my bed.\u201d My sister Rita was babysitting but wouldn\u2019t answer her phone. I rushed home and found Emma locked in the bathroom while Rita slept with earplugs. When I checked beneath the bed, I …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24040,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifevibesever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifevibesever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifevibesever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifevibesever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifevibesever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24036"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lifevibesever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24036\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24042,"href":"https:\/\/lifevibesever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24036\/revisions\/24042"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifevibesever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/24040"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifevibesever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifevibesever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifevibesever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}