What Would YOU DO?

Prudie’s column for Jan. 17.

By Daniel Mallory Ortberg
Jan 17, 20196:00 AM

Dear Prudence,
This is my wife’s second marriage. She had a daughter from that first marriage, and we have adult children of our own. That first marriage was abusive, and my wife’s sister helped her to escape. When she divorced and left her husband, she also left her child and has never tried to trace or contact her. She finds the whole subject very painful, so much so that she waited to tell me until just before our wedding when she could no longer keep the secret. I think she came close to leaving me rather than have to do that. I have respected her pain and kept the secret through over 30 years of marriage. In particular, our kids have no clue their mom was married before or that they have a sister.

The only evidence was a sealed cardboard box with a few pictures, in our closet. It kept coming along on moves, never opened. Recently, we realized that it would be bad for that box to be discovered by our children, with no explanation, after we were gone. She asked me to dispose of the box, and I did … but I hedged and scanned some of the photos of her and her daughter and secured them so that no one but me can access them. All of this has me rethinking things. I am well aware that genetic testing has the potential to bring this to light at any point in the future. It would be easiest, and maybe best, to let sleeping dogs lie, but there’s a part of me that thinks our kids should hear it from us, and really from my wife, as I can tell them little beyond the bare facts. However, my wife would be hard, or maybe impossible, to convince, and I don’t want to open her wounds unnecessarily. I would love your thoughts on the matter.
—Just Want to Do Right

Tell your wife that you lied about disposing the box, show her the files, and delete them immediately if she instructs you to. This is not a decision you should make on your wife’s behalf and against her stated wishes. I can understand that this is a difficult secret to keep and that you feel uncomfortable at the possibility that your children may find out someday. But the actions you’ve taken in some ways make it more likely that they’ll find out.