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My eyes flicked back to hers. “What makes you say that?” She didn’t even know it was Bones, so how would she know that?
“That painting says it all, sweetheart.”
It was just an image of him looking out into the water. It didn’t even show his face. How could she deduce that? “I don’t know what you mean…”
“I can feel so much emotion from that painting. That man is a major component in your life now. I’ve never seen you paint anyone but your family. But you took the time to paint him…because he means a lot to you.”
He didn’t mean anything to me. He was just a man who had turned my life upside down.
“Your father has been a lot better about you growing up and being a grown woman. I think the space and distance have helped him understand that you’re a woman who’s old enough to have those kinds of relationships. So, if you’re afraid of him—”
“I’m not. He told me if I ever wanted to introduce him to a man, he would like to meet him.”
“Then what is the problem?”
“Well, Father made it clear he only wanted to meet the man that would be my husband…”
“And?”
I stared down into my glass. “This man will never be my husband.” Bones wasn’t even my boyfriend. He was a man I’d become attached to for many horrible reasons. I used him to feel safe. I used him for good sex. Now he was such a big part of my life, it was hard to imagine not having him there. It was hard to sleep without his large body right next to me.
“Why are you so sure of that?”
“I just am.” I finished my wine and immediately grabbed the bottle to pour another glass.
She tilted her head slightly, trying to think of the right thing to say. “When I met your father, I didn’t think he’d ever be my husband either.”
She’d never told me about the beginning of their relationship, but now I knew he’d rescued her from Bones’s father. Bones claimed my father took my mother for his own revenge. I didn’t want to believe it because my father was such a good man, it was hard to imagine him doing anything other than worshiping the ground my mother walked on. “Then what did you think?”
“I thought…we would go our separate ways eventually. He wasn’t my type. He was dark, cold, insufferable at times… He wouldn’t open up to me, no matter how many times I asked him to. Our physical relationship deepened over the course of a year, but he did his best to keep his emotions out of the situation. In that amount of time, I’d come to accept your father for what he was—and even love him for it. It took him a while to reciprocate, but once it happened, the rest of our lives have been exactly the same. Our bond is strong, our loyalty to one another is stronger. I love him more now than I did when I met him thirty years ago.”
It sounded so similar to my relationship with Bones that my hand shook a little.
“What I’m trying to say is, when we’re young, we imagine our future husband. He’s always a knight in shining armor. He’s always on a white horse. He’s always Prince Charming. So when we meet a man who doesn’t fit that description, we assume he’s wrong for us. But there are good men out there, even if they don’t seem that way at first. Sometimes it takes a while to see the goodness underneath. I’ve learned that love is about accepting your partner and loving him not in spite his flaws, but because of them.”
“I don’t love him,” I blurted. I said it so harshly that I didn’t recognize my own voice. I gnashed my teeth together, wanting those words to sound as true as possible. My connection to him was based on physical lust and intimacy. I only saved his life because I hoped he was a better man than he seemed. I could never love a man who despised my family, who despised the people I loved most in this world.
She stared at me with the same expression my father sometimes wore, like she could see right through me. It was a ghostly expression, pregnant with supernatural powers. “If you want him to believe that, don’t show him that painting.”
6
Bones
Five days came and went, and I didn’t hear from Vanessa.
I watched her tracker almost constantly, but she never deviated from two locations—her childhood home and the winery.
The last time we spoke, there was a hint of finality to the conversation. She said goodbye to me, like she wanted it to be the last time she ever saw me. I brushed it off and walked away.
She’d call.
Right now, she felt comfortable with her parents. But the second she was back home, I would be the first person she called. She wanted to push me away, but we were both too invested in this.
