Canvas for Love

by Charlotte Greene

  She didn’t hesitate. In seconds, she was in the bed and in my arms, her head on my shoulder. She felt fragile and insubstantial, her bony shoulder blades and ribs poking out underneath a thin layer of feverish skin. The cast on her arm was heavy. It rubbed across my stomach painfully, but that was the last thing I cared about at that moment. Instead, I let her nestle closer, her lips near my neck. My body was warm from the weight of her, and my nose filled with her scent.

  She was sickly thin, she was broken from her accident, but she was still my Amelia. I squeezed her once as if grasping for life, and then we both fell promptly asleep.

  Chapter Twenty

  Emma woke us the next morning by accident. She came into my room to talk to me and then yelped in surprise when she saw Amelia in bed with me. We both sat up quickly, and I was amused to see that both sisters’ faces turn the same rosy hue.

  Emma’s eyebrows were up, and she backed out of the room slowly. “I’ll just, uh, head home then, ladies. Looks like the two of you have some catching up to do.”

  I made a weak protest, and Emma raised her hands. “It’s okay. Don’t worry about me. I’ll call you later, Amelia.” She almost bolted from the room.

  Amelia scooted away from me a little in bed. She was looking at her hands. I stared at the side of her face for a while, but she refused to meet my eyes. Finally, I had to physically turn her face to get her to look at me. She was still cagey, her eyes flickering away from mine, so I moved my face around until she looked at me completely.

  Once she did, I nodded, satisfied. “Okay then. There you are.”

  Her eyes filled with tears and she glanced away again. I moved closer to her on the bed and put an arm around her shoulders, hugging her. I let her cry, quietly, for a long while, until her body went still beneath my arm. Certain she was okay for the moment, I got up and out of bed and went to the bathroom. I washed my face and grabbed one of the guest bathrobes for some extra warmth. When I came back, she was standing at the window, looking out into her garden.

  She turned toward me, her face lighting up with something like real happiness for the first time since I’d seen her again. She still looked terrible, but I’ve never witnessed anything as lovely as that smile. I smiled back, and if anything, she brightened further. We walked toward each other, and I took her free hand in mine.

  “I missed you,” I said simply.

  She nodded, and her troubled, haunted expression returned. She looked away. I squeezed her hand to get her attention again. “Hey,” I said. “Stop that. We’re going to talk now, okay? And after we talk, we can make some decisions.”

  It took her a long moment to nod, and I realized then that she was afraid. She obviously didn’t know if this would be the first or last conversation of the rest of our lives. I was thinking the same thing, but with this fragile Amelia, I needed to take charge and force the issue. She was still too shattered to make decisions.

  She excused herself to the bathroom, and I went downstairs, grateful to find an empty kitchen. I’d been terrified to find her cook or another servant, but it appeared that Emma had sent everyone home to give us some privacy. I made some coffee and found a pitcher of freshly squeezed OJ in the fridge. Some French bread lay on the counter, and I cut it in half and put it in the toaster oven. Amelia came in just as I was taking it out, and we sat down on the little stools across from each other at the island in the center of the kitchen. It was the least formal room in Amelia’s house and had long been my favorite. Amelia knew this, and we often ate in here when I stayed over. I watched in satisfaction as she buttered a large piece of bread, and we both sat quietly while she ate and drank a cup of coffee.

  All the while, I watched her, still hungry for the sight of her. In the morning light, away from the ugly fluorescents of the hospital, she looked ghostly as opposed to green, but she still looked awful. She’d taken the smallest bandage off her nose, and the injury had blossomed into two black eyes and a jagged cut across the bridge of her nose. The cut was sealed with a tiny row of stiches. The bandage on her forehead was much larger, and it was stained a little pink from the blood pooling beneath it. She’d put her broken arm back in the sling, and it was clear from the way she was moving that she was being careful to avoid pain. She was wrapped tightly in a bathrobe, and she still hadn’t washed her face. It seemed to have taken a lot out of her just to put her sling on, as she looked like she hurt all over.

  “Did they give you any pain meds?” I asked. “Now would be the time to take them—with food.”

  She nodded and then shook her head. “I have some, but I’ll wait a little while yet. I had to take this same stuff when I had my wisdom teeth out, and it always makes me sleepy.” She looked at me hopefully. “Do you think I could have a drink instead?”

  I laughed. “That’s a terrible idea, Amelia.”

  She nodded, clearly disappointed. “I know. I just…”

  “Need some liquid courage?”

  She grinned and then winced, her free hand going to the bridge of her nose. “Ow. It hurts when I smile.”

  “I bet. How did you hit your face? Were you wearing your seat belt?”

  She nodded. “Something hit me and broke the glasses on my nose.”

  My throat constricted. “You could have been killed.”

  She lifted her eyebrows and shook her head. “I don’t know how I wasn’t. My car was completely wrecked. It caught on fire. German engineering saved me, I suppose.”

  “What happened? Do you remember why you had the accident?” I’d been curious about this last night but hadn’t asked her or Emma.

  She squinted as if trying to remember and then shook her head. “Not exactly. I was at the airport to pick up a shipment for work. I remember getting the phone call with news about Sara from the police, and I remember getting in the car.” She looked at me. “I was upset. I know that.”

  I felt sick. She’d wrecked her car because of Sara and what she must have realized about me.

  Amelia clearly realized what I was thinking. She used her free hand to squeeze mine. “Don’t blame yourself. I shouldn’t have been driving when I was that upset—that was stupid.”

  We were quiet for a while, absorbing this news. I wanted desperately to start talking, but I also didn’t want to say a word. I was enjoying this moment of complete understanding, this quiet pause before the storm. Sitting here, in her clean, white kitchen, surrounded by memories of other mornings here, I was almost home again. Not because I was here in this house—I’d never liked it—but because I was here with her. Amelia was home, no matter where we were.

  My eyes filled with tears, and I had to look away and blink rapidly to prevent them from falling. Crying would not be useful right now. When I looked back at Amelia, her face looked pained and remorseful, her eyes lowered and her mouth quivering. Her hand was still in mine, and she rubbed the back of it with her thumb.

  I heard her take a deep breath, as if readying herself, and she finally spoke. “I hate what I did to you.”

  I hesitated and then nodded.

  She couldn’t meet my eyes. She stared out the window above the sink for a while before going on. “I could blame Sara. She’s the reason I lost a lot of trust in the world. But that’s not fair to you or to her.” She looked at me again. “I should have known, Chloé. You would never do something like that.”

  I nodded again. It wasn’t that I had nothing to say. I could have started telling her about my pain, my disappointment, my humiliation, but now wasn’t the time. I wanted her to talk, to explain things, and making her feel guiltier wouldn’t facilitate conversation.

  She sighed and looked away again. “A little over two years ago, when I found out that Sara had stolen money from my company, I almost lost my mind. When my accountant showed me the proof, I still didn’t believe him. It took someone outside of the company to finally prove it to me. I just couldn’t believe she’d done it.”

  “Did you love her?”

  She winced and then nod
ded. “Very much.”

  A knife of pain sliced across my heart. I must have reacted physically to her words, as she looked at me sharply and then frowned.

  “I should have told you about us, Chloé.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  She paused. “For lots of reasons, at first.”

  “Like what?”

  “During the lawsuit, we both agreed to a nondisclosure agreement. Neither of us was allowed to talk to the press or the public about what had happened with the money, and we were forbidden to talk about the other person in public. We also agreed to avoid each other, which was easy enough, as I could hardly look at her, and she was living in New York by then, anyway.”

  She shook her head and threw me an embarrassed glance. “I know all of that that sounds like a stupid excuse for not telling you, but by the time you and I met, I was just kind of used to not talking about her. I’d made myself stop thinking about her as much as possible, and I’d half-convinced myself I’d gotten past what she’d done to me, so there was no use dwelling on it.”

  She took my hand in hers again, the exchange so natural and unpracticed I barely thought to object. We often held hands when it was just the two of us, and despite being separated for a month, we weren’t used to acting differently around each other.

  She sighed. “So that’s my first excuse—the lawsuit. Of course, she broke her end of the bargain long ago, when she started sending messages and threats to my girlfriends and to me. I could have gone to the press then and told them the truth about her, but I didn’t. I was stupid. I wanted to protect her from herself. Now I know I should have told all long ago.” She paused and frowned. “I got no end of grief from that lawsuit. A lot of people thought I’d sued some penniless, innocent girl.”

  Aunt Kate and Meghan had believed just that. I squeezed her hand to encourage her to keep talking. She smiled at me, and then, as if realizing what she was doing, she withdrew her hand from mine.

  She looked up at me, her eyes dark and sad. “All of that is pretty feeble, Chloé. I know that. I’ve been thinking about it a lot since we broke up. Even before I knew you hadn’t stolen the money, I was wondering why I hadn’t told you.” She met my eyes. “Actually, I think I was ashamed.”

  “Of what?”

  She shrugged. “Of my relationship with her failing. Of being a dupe.” She paused. “She took everything from me, Chloé. My trust, my heart, my money.”

  “But it wasn’t your fault, Amelia.”

  She looked at me sharply. “But wasn’t it? I clearly didn’t give her enough. She needed more than I could provide. Otherwise, why would she steal from me?”

  I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter what her motivations were, Amelia. She had no right to do what she did to you or to your company.”

  Amelia looked uncertain for a moment, and then her eyes hardened again. “But she wouldn’t have done it if it hadn’t been for me. I failed her.”

  I held my hand open and waited. Amelia was suddenly shy and hesitant. She looked at me several times before slipping her hand in mine. I clasped it in both of mine.

  “Listen to me, Amelia: it wasn’t your fault. Sara is delusional. She’s unbalanced. I’ve seen it myself. The things she says are believable, because sometimes she seems as sane as you or me, but she’s not. She stole money from you because she wanted it, not because you didn’t give her enough of your love or your money. You didn’t break her. She was already broken.”

  Amelia sighed. “I wish I could believe that, Chloé, but I don’t. Not entirely.” She looked up at me. “Just before I found out that she’d stolen from me the first time, we had a fight. A big one. She wanted me to sell my business and my place and move with her to New York. I’d been thinking of opening a second office there, but I didn’t want to move there full-time. I was cruel to her—cold. Not long after that, some of the money went missing.”

  “Again, Amelia, it’s still not your fault. It wasn’t her decision whether you moved or not—that was yours. Could you have handled the decision better? Maybe. But stealing from you because of her hurt feelings wasn’t justified. It was petty and vengeful.”

  She still looked uncertain. She was staring at the butter dish in the middle of the island as if weighing my words against her memory. Finally, she shook her head and looked at me. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter now.”

  “Of course it does!”

  “No, Chloé, it doesn’t. Whether I’m right or you’re right, Sara still managed to get her revenge. I mean, for God’s sake, look at us. We’re in this situation almost entirely because of her.”

  I paused for a second and then laughed. “Christ, you’re right. My God. We need to stop talking about her.” I shook my head, disgusted. “I’ll just say one more time, for the record, that I’m sorry—I’m sorry for listening to her. And to Daphne Waters.”

  Amelia made a dismissive motion with her hand. “Please. I’m the only person that needs to apologize here. And fuck Daphne.”

  “I can’t believe I fell for it when she called me out of the blue like that.”

  Amelia sighed. “I did the same thing—don’t blame yourself.”

  “Still, I should have known better. And I shouldn’t have let her talk me into waiting to tell you. I should have told you about the meeting with Sara right away.” I frowned, anger bringing heat to my face. “Do you think she knew what would happen?”

  Amelia shrugged. “I wouldn’t put it past her. Daphne loves to stir up drama. She’s a miserable old bag. She knows all those gorgeous men only hang around her because of her money, so she can’t stand it when other people are genuinely happy. After what happened last November, when Sara attacked you, she must have known I’d be upset that you and Sara talked behind my back. I wouldn’t be surprised if she’d planned the whole thing. And we fell right into her trap.” She shook her head. “I hope I never have to see her or Sara again.”

  We were quiet for a while. I couldn’t look at her for very long without feeling my stomach twist into knots. I kept my eyes on my hands just to have something to look at and twisted my coffee cup nervously. There was so much we needed to say, to talk about, and it was all so painful. The urge to leave and flee this conversation was strong. Finally, just to get my good-bye over with, I looked up and met her eyes. Amelia was staring at me. Her expression was pained and repentant, but she also seemed unable to look away. This time I held her gaze. Being able to look at her felt a little like being back at the surface after diving a little too deep. You breathe heavily, trying to catch your breath, your lungs tingling with pain, but the main thing you feel is relief—relief to be back where you’re supposed to be, head above the water.

  Finally, I had to speak. “Look, Amelia, I’ve had a few weeks to get used to things. I found out about your engagement and the lawsuit, I found out about the money stolen from Winters Corporation. Even before that, I knew this breakup wasn’t about us, not entirely anyway. I’ve had some time to get over it.” I paused. “I understand, in theory, why you didn’t trust me. I don’t agree, obviously, but I can see things from your perspective. It must have looked like Sara, Part Two.”

  Amelia grinned slightly. “Little did I know it was literally Sara, Part Two.” She shook her head, appearing disgusted. “It all seems so obvious now, Chloé. I don’t know how I ever thought it was you.” She looked at me and then away, clearly embarrassed. “For a few days there—right after? I thought you and Sara had been having an affair. How stupid is that?”

  I made a face. “More than stupid. She’s not even my type.”

  Amelia laughed and then winced again, putting her hand up to her nose. She jerked in pain from moving too quickly, and I had to smile at how utterly pathetic she was. I rose to my feet and walked around the island to her side. I gave her a delicate hug and she looked up at me, her eyes hopeful. Just about every impulse in me yearned to kiss her right then, but a small, cautious part of me overcame the urge. I turned my eyes away and grabbed her plate, and I se
nsed rather than saw her deflate. I spent the next couple of minutes cleaning, not looking at her, but I could feel her watching me.

  After the dishes were drying in the stand by the sink, I finally made myself look at her again. Her eyes were sad and her shoulders were drooping. She seemed to be taking her last fill of me.

  “I blew it, Chloé, didn’t I?”

  I didn’t respond immediately. I didn’t know how. I searched my heart, I searched my soul, and the only thing I found there was pain. Yes, I wanted what we’d had—desperately, in fact. My whole spirit yearned for her. And now, for the first time since she’d broken up with me, it seemed like I could have her, if I wanted her. But I was also afraid of her love now. Having those feelings between us again would mean opening myself up to the possibility of more pain, more heartache. I wasn’t sure if I could take any more.

  I weighed my response carefully. “Is it enough that I don’t know yet, Amelia? Because I don’t. I wish I could give you a straight answer, but I can’t. I need more time.”

  She paled, her bruised eyes standing out in even firmer contrast on her wan face. She looked as if I’d given her bad news.

  Finally, she nodded. “I understand.” Her voice was hoarse and subdued.

  The sight brought tears to my eyes, and I excused myself to go get changed. I was starting to become desperate to leave. I didn’t want to look at her anymore. If I kept looking at those sad, bleak eyes, my resolve to stay strong would crack.

  She called to me when I was in the doorway to the kitchen, about to leave. “Chloé?”

  I turned and raised my eyebrows, waiting.

  She licked her lips, silent for a long moment, and I could see that she was fighting back tears. She took a deep breath and seemed to force herself to go on. “What happened to the ring? I went back there, a couple of days later, to look for it, but I didn’t find it. I was just wondering…” She shook her head and laughed at herself. “I’m sorry. It’s a stupid question. It doesn’t matter.”