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her art. He was selfless in his teaching, as he was in everything
else. He shared his wealth with her, his home, his studio, his
equipment, and his world. How could she not have been
enamored by the aura that was his? She’d been pulled into his
sphere and lovingly tended to so that she might grow. She’d
tried to give him everything he wanted. She was always there,
as his best friend, even if she could never give him anything
more. He sensed it, she knew he did, but he’d never spoken of
it. Never asked her why she couldn’t love him the way he
loved her. He’d taken the crumbs of herself that she’d offered,
lapping them up one at a time as she could find the strength to
dole them out. He’d always
sensed there was something
broken about her, but he loved her more for it.
She truly did miss him. She missed his advice, his wisdom,
his guiding presence. She missed the calm she felt when she
was with him. She missed him with the ache of knowing that
she was loved beyond measure. And now she was alone. She’d
watched him die. Watched him slowly fade and suffer in those
six months that it took the cancer to claim him.
She’d heard people say it happened so fast, but she knew
the truth. Suffering like that made six months an eternity.
She’d watched the strongest man she knew be reduced to a
pitiful, shrunken, twisted, broken shell of himself. A shell of
anguish and pain, and it was too much for her. Watching Pierre
die had wrung the life from her.
She walked through the now empty conference center,
through a maze of hallways and flights of stairs, until she burst
through a back door manned by event staff dressed all in black
and found herself in the warm, dry darkness. The light haze of
