“Yes,” he answers before she can finish her question.
They both know what she was going to say. Voicing it merely acts like a knife in an already painful and gaping wound. Any noise from leaves underfoot disappear, and he knows that she has come to a standstill. He waits patiently, knowing that anything that needs to be said has to begin with her. He’s too raw to initiate anything.
“Did it happen at night?” she asks, her voice quiet but steady behind the difficult question.
“Not at first,” he replies. “It was a beautiful day. It was the best we’d had for months,” he explains, turning to look back at Gemma. He can barely make her out, but what he can see is that she has her arms wrapped around her waist as though she is holding herself together.
“How?” she finally whispers.
That’s when he moves. Making his way toward her, he notices she’s cautiously monitoring his every step. He wonders about what she’s thinking. Does she want to run? Is she scared?
How ironic is it that the last woman he brought down here was completely at ease with him. She trusted him with her very life and trusted him not to fail. And yet, fail her, he had.
However, right now, standing before him is a woman who let him inside of her body and trusted him with her care, yet she looks like she’s ready to bolt at the first wrong move he might make.
Walking around her, he notices she does everything but physically dig her heels into the grass to keep from moving. When he stops behind her, he places his palms on her shoulders, feeling her stiffen.
“I thought you knew how, Gemma,” he rasps into her ear. “You read the papers. You watch the television. What do they say happened?”
I take a deep breath as I focus on the water that is moving at a startling pace before me. It’s only a few feet from us, but as his hands firmly hold my shoulders, I can’t help but think he can easily make me—
No, that’s ridiculous! I remind myself.
This man has held me, touched me, and been inside my body. He would never do something like that, yet that is exactly what everyone is determined to sell to the world. Could this man, Phillipe, really have done what the stories claim?
I’m so busy thinking about all the frightening and very real possibilities behind the statements I have read regarding this man that I don’t realize his mouth is by my ear again.
“What do they say happened, Gemma?”
I don’t want to answer. I don’t want to voice the terrible things I have read, and somewhere in the fearful part of my mind, maybe I don’t want to give him ideas.
“Tell me,” he demands, more forceful this time.
“They say you were involved,” I divulge, shying away from the details.
“Gemma, Gemma, Gemma,” he admonishes. “That’s not all they say. You know it, and I know it.”
Tightly gripping my own waist, I tell him the truth he is tenaciously searching for. It’s ugly when it slips past my lips. “They say you brought her down here. They say it was your fault.”
His fingers tense on my shoulders and on an anguished rush of air, he answers, “They were right.”
“Phillipe!Really? Here?”
Chantel giggled as he started to undo the buttons on her shirt.
“Why not here? It’s quiet and peaceful. You’re here. I’m here.”
“Kiss me.”
Laughing, she grasped his hands, tugging him closer.
Lowering his head, he pressed his mouth to hers. “Always.”
Phillipe turns his nose into Gemma’s hair and takes a deep breath. She smells sweet and spicy. As he grips her shoulders, listening to her breathing accelerate, he knows she is scared.
He isn’t sure what she’s scared of, but he knows fear is starting to trickle through her veins, making its way up her spine.
“Nothing is as beautiful or peaceful as watching the purity of an untainted soul leave the world,” he murmurs, placing his lips against Gemma’s cool cheek. “She looked right at me, right at me. Do you know what she told me?”
Gemma turns her head, and her eyes meet his. She mouths, “No.”
“She told me she saw lights.” He closes his eyes, releasing Gemma’s shoulders. “She was blind, and even she was seeing the fucking lights. I told her not to look at them, Gemma,” he explains, feeling the desperation behind every word leaving his mouth. “I told her, but she didn’t listen to me.”
Jamming his hands back into his pockets, he moves around her and makes his way back to the edge of the water. This time, he makes himself look at the swirling current.
“The first day we ever came down here, we had a picnic. It was beautiful—a perfect moment and a perfect day. So, of course, I wanted to come back. I wanted to paint her here, but the second time we came back, things changed.”
Leaves crunch, and then she is beside him. Gemma reaches out and takes his hand with hers. The wind picks up and ruffles through their hair. Phillipe closes his eyes as he pictures her beside him instead.
“I wanted to paint you. You told me I could, so I brought you back here. That was the day you went away.”
I hold Phillipe’s hand, trying to extend my sympathies. I try to show that he can trust me as he stands beside me, talking to a woman who is no longer here. In that moment, as the wind picks up and swirls around us both, I look out across the water to the opposite bank. I stop and focus on a shadow. No, maybe it’s a figure. It stands there, looking back at us. It’s quietly judging, quietly watching.
Shaking my head, I turn to see Phillipe has his eyes closed, and his mouth is pulled tight. I don’t understand much of what has happened to me in the past few days, but one thing I know for certain is that he is still with her and she is still with him.
And me? Well, I’m caught somewhere in between.
Chapter Nineteen ~ Rhapsody
Day 17
Adagio for Strings ~ Samuel Barber
Link: http://blindobsessionbook.com/adagio-for-strings/
Adagio for Strings is a piece I am familiar with. I remember watching it once on a tribute to 9/11, and ever since, it has moved me. Today, it once again moves me for different reasons.
During that evening by the river, we agreed to a few days of respite before making our way back to the chateau in complete silence. Consequently, I lie in my bed, unable to sleep for the rest of the night.
Time doesn’t stand still though, and it is slowly creeping by. No matter how painful it might be, we need to move forward.
I make my way into the studio this morning to see Phillipe over by the window. That’s when I hear the weeping sounds of the violin. Stepping into the space I now ironically feel the most comfortable in, he turns, and as our eyes meet, the expression I receive is pained and tired. It’s almost the exact replica of mine.
“I want you to paint me,” I tell him as I step closer.
I’ve thought about this for the last few days. Running it through my mind, I have tried to figure out the best way to connect with him. Obviously, it isn’t by talking things out face to face, and it occurs to me that the most I have ever gotten out of him is when he’s painting me.
“Why?” he asks, shaking me from my thoughts.
As he moves closer, I notice that he’s dressed today in the usual black pants with my favorite hunter green sweater, and he looks devastating.