The Anatomy of Deception - Lawrence Goldstone [125]
“When you came by yesterday morning, I was too aggrieved to see you and, to be honest, extremely distressed that you ignored my wishes. How could you possibly have made that grisly visit to the cemetery?”
“You begged me to help.” I heard the shrillness in my protest. “To find out the truth about Rebecca. If I had not gone … done what I did … you never would have known.”
Her face was beautiful, implacable. “I know now that sometimes it may be better to have a terrible truth withheld. I will never be able to look at you again without being reminded of poor Rebecca’s coffin being dug up and opened in the dead of night.”
“Perhaps after some time away …” I mumbled.
“Quite some time, I’m afraid. Simply put, Ephraim, I do not expect to return anytime in the near future, so it would be pointless to pretend there is any potential for us. You are an exceptional man and I have complete confidence that you will find the love and fulfillment you seek with another. Although I have no right to make such a request, I ask for your indulgence and understanding. I hope that one day you will be able to think of me with fondness rather than rancor.”
A stunning emptiness came over me, as if I had been hollowed out, followed by a horrible pain—searing, tearing through me. Never to see her again, never to touch her, hear her voice. The helplessness, the sense of loss, was crushing. This was, surely, a death, how Halsted must have felt when he realized that his destiny had been totally wrested from his control.
“Then there is nothing …”
“I’m sorry,” she said, but looking on her face, so placid, so utterly unaffected, I knew at once that she had been regretful before, that I was not the first man to sit across from her with dashed hopes and smashed dreams. I was surely not the only man who found her to be the most alluring woman he’d ever met, not the first to fall in love with her. Eakins, I now knew, was in love with her, too. Every man she met, I expected, was prone to the same fate.
While she loved none of them in return.
Then, suddenly, as with Monique, I saw Abigail for the person she was. Beauty without soul. All her passion went on her canvases. There was none in the person herself. It was she who was truly hollowed out.
There was nothing more to be said. I stood to leave.
“There is something I’d like you to have, if you want it,” she said.
“What is that?”
“The portrait. I’ve had it wrapped for you. If you don’t want it, I’m going to have it destroyed. I’ve already done that with Rebecca’s painting. I want no reminders.”
“I’ll take it,” I said.
Abigail rang and instructed Martin to bring the package. He soon returned with a parcel wrapped in cloth and tied with string.
She stood and faced me. “Good-bye, Ephraim.”
I couldn’t speak the word. I mutely took up the package and walked past her out of the room. As I passed into the vestibule, Albert was standing at the top of the stairs. I stopped and our eyes met. I considered confronting him for his perfidy, but I realized that he felt no more responsibility for Rebecca Lachtmann than the butcher surgeon Burleigh had felt for Mr. Whitbread. For a moment, we stared at one another and then, without the hypocrisy of false pleasantries, I left the Benedict home for the final time.
When I arrived home and placed the painting in the hall, Mrs. Mooney asked what it was. When I told her, she fetched a knife and, without uttering a word, cut the string binding the cloth. When the painting was unwrapped, she leaned it against the wall and stood back to examine it. She placed her right index finger to her lower lip and cocked her