I spent the night in a small motel overlooking the water.
The wooden box sat on the table beside my bed.
I didn't open it.
Not yet.
I was afraid that if I did, another piece of Robert's life would step out of it and change the way I remembered everything.
Instead, I watched the waves through the window.
By morning, I had made my decision.
I would find Elise.
Not because I wanted to know whether Robert had loved another woman.
I already knew that people could love more than once, in more than one way, at different times.
I wanted to know why Robert had never told me about her.
My flight was booked that afternoon.
The destination was a town in France.
Thomas had written Elise's address in careful handwriting.
I arrived two days later.
The town was smaller than I expected.
Stone buildings lined narrow streets.
Flower boxes hung beneath windows.
A church bell sounded somewhere beyond the rooftops.
I followed the address until I reached a modest house with green shutters.
I stood outside for nearly ten minutes.
Then I knocked.
A woman answered.
She was older than the photograph, of course.
But I recognized her immediately.
Her eyes were the same.
She looked at me for a long moment.
Then she whispered, “Abigail.”
I nodded.
Her hand went to her mouth.
“Oh.”
She stepped backward.
“Come in.”
I entered.
Elise closed the door.
Neither of us knew what to say.
Finally she gestured toward the sitting room.
“Please.”
I sat.
She remained standing.
“You look like him.”
I almost smiled.
“So everyone keeps telling me.”
Elise sat opposite me.
Her eyes were wet.
“I wondered whether you would ever come.”
That sentence again.
Everyone seemed to have expected me except me.
“How did you know?”
“Thomas told me.”
“When?”
“Years ago.”
I looked around.
There were no photographs of Robert.
That surprised me.
Perhaps there were things she had chosen to keep hidden too.
“You loved him,” I said.
Elise looked down.
“Yes.”
The honesty was almost a relief.
“Did he love you?”
She closed her eyes.
“For a time.”
I nodded.
“That is what I needed to know.”
But Elise shook her head.
“No.”
I looked at her.
“You need to know more than that.”
She stood and walked toward a cabinet.
She opened a drawer and removed a bundle of letters tied with blue ribbon.
“I kept these.”
She placed them on the table.
“Why?”
“Because I couldn't throw them away.”
I touched the ribbon.
“Are these from Robert?”
“Some.”
She sat down again.
“Others are mine.”
I didn't untie them.
“What happened?”
Elise looked toward the window.
“We were young.”
“So were we.”
She smiled faintly.
“He wanted to travel. I wanted to travel. We thought the world was waiting for us.”
I understood that feeling.
Then she said, “And then he met you.”
I looked down.
“He told you?”
“He wrote to me.”
“How long?”
“After you were married, not often.”
I looked up sharply.
“After?”
“Yes.”
There was no accusation in her voice.
Only history.
“Why?”
“Because he wanted to tell me he had chosen.”
I swallowed.
“What did you say?”
“I told him I already knew.”
“How?”
Elise smiled sadly.
“Because he stopped writing about leaving.”
The room became very quiet.
“He wrote about you instead.”
I looked away.
I had expected jealousy.
Instead I felt embarrassed by the tears forming in my eyes.
Elise continued.
“He told me you were pregnant.”
I nodded.
“He said he was frightened.”
“That sounds like him.”
“He said he had never been more certain of anything.”
I looked at her.
“You were angry.”
“Yes.”
“Did you hate me?”
“No.”
Her answer came immediately.
“I didn't even know you.”
She untied the ribbon.
“He asked me to forgive him.”
“For what?”
“For choosing a different life.”
I stared at the letters.
Then Elise said something that surprised me.
“He also asked me to keep painting.”
I looked up.
“Painting?”
“Yes.”
“He told you about that?”
“He told me he was afraid he would stop.”
I remembered Thomas saying Robert had painted his entire life.
I remembered the room of paintings.
The blue bird.
Elise removed a letter.
“He wrote this when he was very sick.”
She handed it to me.
I hesitated.
“Should I read it?”
“Yes.”
The letter was not romantic.
It was practical.
Robert wrote about his hands becoming weaker.
About how difficult it was to paint.
About how he had begun giving paintings away.
Then he wrote about me.
He said I was still trying to take care of everyone.
He said he worried that after his death, I would turn grief into another responsibility.
I pressed the paper to the table.
Elise looked at me.
“He loved you very deeply.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
The question surprised me.
She leaned forward.
“He didn't love you because you made his life easy. He loved you because you challenged him to become someone he had not planned to be.”
I thought about that.
For decades, I had imagined marriage as the place where two people settled.
Perhaps ours had been the place where two people changed.
Elise returned the letter to the pile.
“There is something else.”
I looked up.
She walked to another cabinet.
From it, she took a small envelope.
“I was supposed to send this to you after he died.”
“Why didn't you?”
“I was afraid.”
“Of what?”
“That you would think I was trying to enter your grief.”
She handed it to me.
“It was his last letter to me.”
I opened it.
The letter was dated only months before his death.
Robert thanked Elise for being part of his youth.
He said he was grateful their paths had crossed.
Then he wrote that he no longer wanted to look backward.
He wanted the rest of his time to belong to the people beside him.
His children.
His grandchildren.
Me.
I closed the letter.
Elise watched me.
“He knew he was dying.”
“Yes.”
“And he never told me.”
“Perhaps he didn't want you to remember him as a dying man.”
I nodded.
That sounded exactly like him.
Before I left, Elise asked whether I was still traveling.
“Yes.”
“Where next?”
“I don't know.”
She smiled.
“Good.”
I laughed.
Then she walked me to the door.
At the threshold, she touched my arm.
“There is one thing Robert never told you.”
I looked at her.
“What?”
“He wasn't afraid of dying.”
I waited.
“He was afraid of what you would do after.”
My throat tightened.
“He said you were the strongest person he had ever known.”
I smiled through tears.
“He never said that to me.”
“He said it to everyone else.”
I hugged her.
It surprised both of us.
When I walked away from her house, I felt strangely peaceful.
The mystery of Elise had not destroyed my marriage.
It had restored something.
I no longer saw Robert as a man whose secrets I had to uncover.
I saw him as a whole person.
And somehow that made it easier to love the man I had known.
That evening, I returned to my hotel and opened the wooden box from Thomas.
At the bottom was a small notebook.
Inside was a list.
Countries.
Cities.
Dates.
Places Robert had wanted to visit with me.
I recognized almost all of them.
But there was one final destination circled twice.
Beside it, Robert had written:
If Abigail ever travels alone, she should start here.
I stared at the name.
It was the one place I had never planned to visit.
And suddenly I understood.
Robert hadn't left me a map to the past.
He had left me a way forward.
Click here to continue reading: PART 7: The Place Robert Marked Twice Wasn’t a Tourist Destination, and Someone There Had Been Waiting for Me
The Morning I Realized Every Square Foot of My Life Belonged to Someone Else
Part 6 of 20
