R.M.
Robert Mitchell.
My husband.
My dead husband.
My hands began to shake.
I knew that painting.
I knew every brushstroke.
I knew the tiny mistake Robert had made in the left corner where the dock disappeared into the water.
I knew the darker patch beneath the cottage window.
I knew the way he had mixed too much blue into the sky and then tried to correct it with white.
I had watched him paint it.
I had watched him sit at our kitchen table late at night with a brush between his fingers while I washed dishes.
I had watched him step backward, squint at the canvas, and mutter,
“Something’s wrong.”
“You’ve said that for twenty minutes,” I had told him.
“Because something is wrong.”
“It looks beautiful.”
“That’s because you love me.”
“Exactly.”
He had smiled.
Then he had kissed my forehead.
That was more than twenty years ago.
And I had believed the painting was gone.
Destroyed.
Lost.
Perhaps thrown away during one of our many moves.
I had searched for it once.
Then twice.
Eventually, I stopped asking.
Now it was hanging above a stranger’s fireplace on the other side of the world.
“Abigail?”
Arthur’s voice sounded distant.
