I don't know what month it was when I finally received a letter from him. It may have been December. Here is what I read:
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My Dearest Rebekah,

I just decided to write you a note to tell you some things. Lassie is doing good. My chickens are good laying hens.

I'm sorry I haven't told you what's been happening here. I thought it best not to last summer because I knew you'd be hurt.

Anyway, last July I married my wife. I didn't think it would be right to marry someone as young and pretty as you. Keep your creativity and your gentleness, and someday a kind young man worthy of you will be your husband. I'm sorry I'm not that man. But Yahweh knows you want to be a farmers wife. Rebekah, although I can't be your husband, Linda and I would like to have you as a friend. Our baby is due this March. Keep your sweetness, and stay devoted to Yahweh.
Your Friend, Daniel

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I remember feeling disembodied for a moment as I read the letter, laying on my bed. Sarah sat on hers, and she looked over at me when I collapsed and make awful choking, sobbing gasps into my pillow. I remember Lori, shocked that this had happened to me. She couldn't believe it.

Gray. Black. Numb. Nothingness. Sleep. Crying. My scalp itched and my hand went to it. Gray, gray, gray. Wanting to die. Reading the letter over and over again. I don't know if I ate much. If I did, it didn't taste like anything at all. Life was a big blank. All I knew was that I couldn't go on. I wanted to die with ever fiber of my being. I knew exactly where my hunting knife was, with its 6" blade. My chest ached with a physical pain greater than anything that knife could possibly inflict. My eyes were swollen. The pillow was never dry in the morning, having been turned from one side to the other all night long until the whole thing was damp. Fog swallowed me. I didn't work. I didn't get up. I didn't brush my hair. I must have gone to the bathroom, but I don't remember doing anything. Maybe I wandered around like some kind of zombie. I know that when I went outside, Laddie was there for me. I could bury my face in the thick, long haired ruff of his neck and sob broken heartedly. Even he got tired of it after awhile. My head itched. There were itchy scabs. I took them off. Grayness. Bed. The knife. It was waiting for me, only an arm's length away. I laid very still, willing myself not to move, not to reach for it. I laid that way for hours and hours, because if I moved, I might grab that knife. I thought about Daniel, writing me that letter in August when he was already married to someone else. How could he betray me that way? I didn't understand it. It didn't make sense. What was there for me in life nwo? The only thing I had lived for was gone, in the arms of a woman named Linda. Oh, those scabs again.... Sleep. Blackness. Numbness. Lots of fog. Day after day I cycled back and forth between sobbing until I was exhausted, and fading into a timeless feelingless state where nothing mattered, where I saw nothing, cared for nothing, paid attention to nothing, did nothing. I wished I could die. Sometimes the knife was within my reach, in my hands even, and I meant to walk to the bathroom and drain my wrists into the bathtub, so I wouldn't make a mess, but was too tired to get up and walk there. Days? Weeks? Time meant nothing. I slept, cried, lived in a state that was neither sleep nor wakefulness. Nothing else could hurt me now. Life, death, held no terrors for me anymore. Those scabs....my hand wandered to my scalp again. Fog. So much numbness and fog.When the fuzz cleared enough for me to be able to think, my thoughts went round and round with the same questions. July? March? I counted. Was she pregnant when they got married? Why.....how? How could he do that to me? How could he? I didn't even notice other men. Just the thought of anyone else...ugh....How could he continue writing to me when he was already married to another woman? I took out the letter he'd written in August, reread it over and over and over again, looking for some kind of clue, some sense of foreboding that would have warned me. Why didn't he tell me sooner? How could you just go and do this and not even tell me? Daniel....Daniel.....my mind cried, screamed, whispered his name.....Despite the pain, I loved him as much as I ever had. I would never be whole again.....would never take another man. How could he think I was so shallow that I could even fathom the idea of taking another man to replace him, another farmer? I didn't want a young man, I wanted my man, Daniel. Oh Daniel....how could you do that to me....why? What did I do? What was wrong with me? Why couldn't anyone ever love me? Why? Why? If there was some flaw in me that I needed to fix, something that made me unlovable, why wouldn't anyone tell me so I could get rid of it? I would have done anything for him, would have died for him gladly.....Why....Daniel, why.....

The fuzzy grayness drifted over me again.