And if Arthur is still around, make him buy the coffee.
He still owes me twelve dollars.”
I laughed through my tears.
Arthur looked at me.
“I was hoping he had forgotten about that.”
I laughed harder.
Then I cried.
Not the way I had cried at Robert’s funeral.
This felt different.
Like grief and relief had somehow entered the same room.
For years, I had carried a quiet guilt whenever I enjoyed something Robert would never get to experience.
Selling the house.
Traveling alone.
Being happy.
Part of me had believed moving forward meant leaving him behind.
And there he was, in his own handwriting, telling me to go.
Arthur and I talked until the coffee became cold.
He told me stories about Robert I had never heard.
Robert falling asleep during a jazz concert.
Getting lost while insisting he knew exactly where he was.
Trying to cook fish over a campfire and dropping it into the dirt.
“That sounds like him,” I said, laughing.
Arthur smiled.
“He talked about you constantly near the end.”
Then something occurred to me.
“You knew who I was when we met?”
“Not immediately.”
Arthur explained that he hadn’t seen a recent photograph of me.
Only after our second meeting, when I mentioned Robert and where we had lived, did he begin to suspect.
“Why didn’t you tell me then?”
Arthur raised an eyebrow.
“Imagine traveling alone in Australia and having some strange man say, ‘By the way, I knew your dead husband and I’ve been storing his letters for twelve years.’”
I smiled.
“That would have been memorable.”
“I thought coffee was safer.”
“So you invited me here because of the painting?”
“Partly.”
“Partly?”
For the first time, Arthur looked almost embarrassed.
“And partly because I wanted to spend more time with my best friend’s wife.”
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