The bakery Alexis’ parents ran for a very long time started losing customers because they couldn’t keep up with the new trends and stuck to the traditional. As things started getting more bleak, they arranged a marriage for their daughter.
Alexis was about to marry a man she had never met before.
Robert was a rich man, but he was very cold. The two barely spoke to one another, yet their wedding was extravagant. The wedding planner took care of everything, even the tiniest of details. The day was a picture perfect one. Alexis wore a gown most women can only dream of, yet she and her husband felt like complete strangers, and the truth was that they were exactly that; strangers.
A couple of days before the ceremony, Robert told Alexis, “I’m looking forward to being married. But I don’t know what I’m doing,” and that was the closest he had gotten to letting her in.
Following the wedding, the two moved into Robert’s house. It was more like a mansion, a huge place with plenty of rooms, each of which more beautifully decorated and furnished that the other.
“Come, I’ll show you around,” Robert said.
“It’s beautiful,” Alexis said when they got to the kitchen. “Everything is beautiful.”
“Now, Alexis, this house belongs to you too,” he declared with a hint of pride.
However, there was a rule Robert imposed. He asked from Alexis not to go to the attic, ever. It was a forbidden room.
Alexis agreed and promised she would never go to the attic.
However, her curiosity was stronger than her senses so one day, when Robert went to a meeting and she was left all alone in the house, she went to the attic.
Once she opened the door, she started crying. She wasn’t even sure how she could feel confusion and relief at the same time.
There, in the dimly lit attic, it felt as though Alexis had stumbled upon a treasury of her husband’s concealed memories. Scattered across the space were remnants of his childhood: toys with untold tales, old postcards, and photographs documenting Robert’s life before their union. Amidst these relics, poignant letters exchanged between a young boy and his father, a soldier stationed far from home during wartime, lay nestled, revealing glimpses of a long-gone era.
“How dare you come in here? Now, I have to change the locks in my own home because my wife does not respect my requests?” Alexis saw Robert at the door, visibly angry.
“I just want to understand, I just want to know you, Robert,” she said.
Looking at his wife, Robert calmed down and decided to tell her his story.
“My father was a stern man. He was a soldier and he believed in keeping emotions locked away. These are the only things I have of a time when I felt loved,” he confessed.
Robert opened up about his lonely childhood and the boy who longed for his father’s approval.
This revelation filled Robert’s heart with relief. He was no longer the cold and silent man Alexis was used to seeing. In those moments, he changed, he let Alexis in and their relationship became deep.
Years later, Robert’s painful past has been replaced with the laughter of his daughter April. Over time, he let go of the things that haunted him for so long and got rid of the things in the attic, which is now a little reading nook.
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