I didn’t understand.
Then he explained.
Years after he’d painted the second version at home and it was destroyed, Robert painted a third one from memory: the one now hanging above Arthur’s fireplace.
It wasn’t the exact painting I’d lost. It was a copy.
That explained why every detail looked so familiar.
“Why would he send it to you?”
Arthur stood up.
“There’s something I need to show you.”
He left the room.
My heart was pounding.
When Arthur returned, he carried a wooden box.
He placed it on the coffee table.
Inside were dozens of letters.
Every envelope had the same sender written across the front.
Robert.
I picked up the first letter.
The return address was our old house.
My hands began shaking again.
“How long were you two writing?”
“On and off for decades.”
I looked at Arthur.
“Robert never told me.”
That hurt.
Arthur noticed.
“He wasn’t hiding an affair, Abigail.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You thought it.”
I almost laughed. He was right.
Arthur explained that after Robert returned to the United States, they occasionally wrote to each other.
Then life got busy.
Marriage, children, and work.
Sometimes years passed between letters.
But when Robert became ill, he found Arthur online through an old friend.
They began writing again.
