“Why didn’t he tell me?”
Arthur looked down at his hands.
“Because most of what he wrote was about you.”
That stopped me.
“Me?”
He nodded.
Arthur pulled out an envelope.
“He sent this with the painting.”
He handed it to me. The envelope was sealed.
My name was written across it.
I recognized Robert’s handwriting instantly, but I couldn’t bring myself to open it yet.
Instead, I asked, “Why do you have this?”
Arthur leaned back.
“Because Robert asked me to keep it.”
“Indefinitely?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Arthur gave me a sad smile.
“Because he hoped you’d visit Australia and go to that secondhand bookstore he told you about. I went there every day after I got Robert’s last letter, hoping to bump into you.”
I stared at him, mouth agape.
Then he told me what Robert had written in his final letters.
He’d worried about me. Not because I couldn’t manage money or couldn’t live alone.
But because I never seemed to believe I was allowed to choose myself.
“He said you gave everything away,” Arthur told me. “Time. Money. Energy.”
I looked down.
“Robert said you were happiest when you were planning trips you never took.”
My throat tightened.
Arthur continued.
“Your husband wrote that his biggest regret wasn’t dying before retirement. It was that he helped you believe life could always be postponed.”
Tears ran down my face; I finally opened the envelope.
Robert’s letter was four pages long.
I couldn’t read the entire thing aloud without stopping, but one part broke me.
“Abigail,
If you’re reading this in Australia, then you’ve finally done something we’ve both been talking about since we were young. And if I’m not there with you, don’t turn the trip into a memorial for me. See things because you want to seethem.”
