My wife vanished 20 years ago, leaving nothing but a note that said, “I hope you will forgive me someday.” I spent two decades waiting for answers. I never expected to find one hanging from a young woman’s neck in a grocery store. I was in the produce section last Monday afternoon, picking out fruits, when my entire life stopped making sense. I saw a young woman. She was maybe 19 or 20, dark-haired, carefully turning apples over in her hands the way someone does when they actually care about what they’re choosing. I noticed her the way you notice anyone who reminds you of something you’ve lost.

She reached for another apple, and when the locket around her neck caught the light, I couldn’t breathe. It was silver. Small.

Oval. A green stone set slightly off-center. And along the left edge, a faint scratch from the day my wife, Lucy, caught it on a car door two weeks after I gave it to her.

I had given that locket to my wife on our fifth wedding anniversary, and she had never, not once, taken it off. “Excuse me,” I said, crossing the aisle toward the young woman. “I’m sorry to bother you.

Could you tell me where you got that locket?”

She touched it instinctively, the way people do when a stranger references something personal. The world around me faded. I need to take you back because none of what comes next makes any sense without it.

I’d known Lucy since we were 17. She had a way of laughing that made the room reorganize itself around her. I was in love with her before I had the vocabulary to name it properly.

We got married right after college, and for 11 years, it was the kind of life that makes you genuinely believe you have things figured out. Then, one September morning, my phone rang. It was the police.

Lucy’s car had been found off Route 9, near the old bridge. The front bumper was dented, one headlight cracked, but there were no skid marks. Just the car pulled to the side with the driver’s door left open.

The officers said that when they arrived, the vehicle was empty. On the passenger seat was a note in Lucy’s handwriting: “I hope you will forgive me someday.”

Seven words. And not one of them told me what I actually needed to know.

I put up flyers. I drove out every time someone called with a possible sighting. I sat across from detectives who grew progressively less hopeful every time I came back.