The address Arthur had given me belonged to a weathered blue house near the coast, almost four hours from Melbourne.
I arrived just before sunset.
The sea was somewhere beyond the row of houses, hidden behind dunes and wind-bent trees. I could hear gulls calling overhead and smell salt in the cold evening air.
For several minutes I remained in the car with both hands resting on the steering wheel.
The name on the paper was Thomas Bell.
I had never heard it before.
Yet Arthur had said Thomas knew Robert before I did.
That thought had unsettled me during the entire drive.
I finally stepped out, walked to the front door, and knocked.
An elderly man opened it.
He was tall and thin, with white hair and a wooden walking stick tucked beneath one arm.
His eyes settled on my face.
He didn't ask who I was.
Instead, he said, “You're Robert's wife.”
My stomach tightened.
“Yes.”
He closed his eyes briefly.
“I wondered if you'd ever come.”
I stood there speechless.
Thomas opened the door wider.
“Come inside, Abigail.”
I had never told him my name.
The living room was filled with books, framed photographs, and old paintings.
Several canvases leaned against the walls.
My eyes immediately searched for the blue bird.
I saw it on a painting of a fisherman standing beneath a gray sky.
Another showed a woman sitting alone on a train.
Another showed a young couple walking through a market.
Robert's hand was everywhere.
Thomas noticed me looking.
“He gave me those.”
“All of them?”
“Not all.”
He moved slowly toward an armchair.
“Sit.”
I sat across from him.
For a moment, neither of us spoke.
Then Thomas said, “Robert was twenty-six when I met him.”
I did the calculation automatically.
That meant Robert had been only a young man.
Before me.
Before our marriage.
Before our children.
Before the house.
“What was he like?”
Thomas smiled.
“Restless.”
I laughed softly.
“That sounds right.”
“He wanted to see everything. He was always asking questions. About people. Places. Why things were built a certain way. Why some people stayed and others left.”
I looked at the paintings.
“He painted then?”
“He sketched first.”
Thomas pointed toward a framed photograph.
Robert stood beside him, much younger than I had ever known him.
His hair was dark.
His face was thinner.
And he was smiling in a way I hadn't seen in years.
I touched the photograph.
“You look nothing like the man I knew.”
Thomas chuckled.
“He said the same thing about himself.”
I looked up.
“What happened?”
“Life.”
The answer was simple.
Too simple.
Thomas explained that he and Robert had traveled together for several months before Robert returned home.
They had slept in cheap rooms, worked temporary jobs, and sometimes had barely enough money for food.
They had argued.
They had laughed.
They had talked about women.
“Did he tell you about me?”
Thomas nodded.
“You had already met by then.”
I frowned.
“We met when I was twenty-four.”
“Exactly.”
He leaned back.
“He was terrified.”
I smiled.
“Robert?”
“Absolutely.”
“That doesn't sound like him.”
“He acted confident around you?”
“Yes.”
“He was pretending.”
I laughed.
Thomas laughed too.
“He spent half a day deciding whether to ask you out.”
“That sounds more like him.”
Then his expression became serious.
“He told me that meeting you changed his plans.”
“What plans?”
“He had wanted to keep traveling.”
I stared at him.
“He never told me that.”
“He wanted to travel for years.”
My heart sank.
All those conversations about postponed trips suddenly looked different.
Robert hadn't merely wanted to travel someday.
He had once imagined a life built around movement.
Then he met me.
And chose another life.
Not because he regretted the first one.
Because he wanted me more.
Thomas rose carefully.
“I have something for you.”
He disappeared into a hallway.
When he returned, he carried a small wooden box.
He placed it on the table between us.
The lid was scratched.
The brass latch was tarnished.
“Robert left this with me.”
I stared at it.
“When?”
“Before he went home.”
“Why?”
“He told me to keep it until he had something worth putting inside.”
I looked at him.
“What's inside?”
Thomas opened the box.
There were postcards.
Old photographs.
A pocket notebook.
And several folded pages.
I picked up the notebook.
Robert's handwriting filled the first page.
I recognized it instantly.
My hands began trembling.
The entries were short.
Names.
Places.
Observations.
Sketches.
Ideas.
Then I found something dated shortly after he had met me.
The entry was only a few lines.
Thomas watched my face.
“What does it say?”
I read it silently first.
Robert had written that he had met a woman who made him want to stop running.
I swallowed.
The next line was harder.
He wrote that stopping frightened him more than leaving ever had.
I closed the notebook.
“He loved me.”
Thomas looked surprised.
“You didn't know?”
“I knew he loved me.”
“That isn't what I meant.”
I looked at him.
Thomas leaned forward.
“He wrote about you before you were even married.”
I looked down at the notebook again.
He had chosen me.
Not because he had given up on adventure.
Because he had decided that building a life with me was an adventure worth taking.
The realization brought both comfort and pain.
Thomas reached into the box.
“There is more.”
He removed a photograph.
It showed Robert beside a woman I didn't recognize.
She was perhaps thirty.
Dark hair.
A serious expression.
On the back was a date.
I looked at Thomas.
“Who is she?”
He hesitated.
“That is why I asked you to come.”
My pulse quickened.
“Who is she?”
Thomas took a breath.
“Her name was Elise.”
I waited.
“She knew Robert before you did.”
“How well?”
“Very well.”
The room seemed colder.
I reminded myself that Robert had been young.
We had both had lives before marriage.
There was no betrayal in that.
Yet Thomas's expression told me this was not merely an old girlfriend.
“What happened between them?”
Thomas looked toward the window.
“They were supposed to leave Australia together.”
I stared at him.
“Leave for where?”
“Europe.”
My fingers tightened around the photograph.
“When?”
“Months before Robert returned home.”
“Why didn't he go?”
Thomas looked directly at me.
“Because you were pregnant.”
I couldn't breathe.
I hadn't known.
I remembered my first pregnancy.
The fear.
The excitement.
The way Robert had held my hand in the hospital.
But he had never told me that before our wedding, he had been planning to leave the country.
Thomas continued quietly.
“Elise left without him.”
I looked at the photograph again.
“Did they stay in contact?”
“For a while.”
“How long?”
“Years.”
The answer sat between us.
I had never known about Elise.
I had never known Robert had corresponded with her.
I had never known about Europe.
Thomas reached for another envelope.
“This is why I needed to find you.”
I looked at it.
The handwriting on the front was Robert's.
My name wasn't there.
Neither was Elise's.
There was only an address.
Thomas said, “Robert asked me to give this to you if you ever came looking.”
My heart began pounding.
“You knew I would come?”
“He hoped.”
I opened the envelope.
Inside was a photograph of a train station.
On the back, Robert had written a date.
And beneath it, one sentence.
The road I didn't take still exists somewhere.
I stared at the words.
Thomas said nothing.
I felt the weight of the years pressing against me.
I had sold my house because I believed I was finally free to discover who I was without Robert.
Now I was discovering how many versions of Robert had existed before and after me.
Somehow, instead of making our marriage smaller, the discoveries made it larger.
He had been a man with fears, ambitions, regrets, friendships, mistakes, and unfinished dreams.
Just like me.
Thomas pushed the wooden box toward me.
“Take it.”
I looked up.
“I can't.”
“You can.”
“It belongs to you.”
“No.”
He closed the lid.
“It belonged to Robert.”
Then he placed his hand over mine.
“And now it belongs to you.”
I took the box.
Outside, the last light was disappearing over the ocean.
Before I left, Thomas gave me one final piece of information.
“Elise is still alive.”
I stopped at the doorway.
“Where?”
Thomas handed me another paper.
A city.
A country.
A name.
I stared at it.
The next destination on my journey had just chosen itself.
Click here to continue reading: PART 6: I Thought Elise Would Tell Me About an Old Romance, Until Her First Words Changed Everything I Believed
The Morning I Realized Every Square Foot of My Life Belonged to Someone Else
Part 5 of 20
