Page 38 of Isn't She Lucky
It is.
Now, I know she’s somewhere around here. And I think I know just where to find her.
I head upstairs and walk to the room where we spent most of our time – my childhood bedroom. When I open the door, I see her sitting at the edge of the bed, wearing a pink sheer nightgown, but it fits more like a big shirt. I can see her shapely breasts poking through the thin garment. Her hair hangs at hershoulders, hiding her face. She turns to look at me, rocking the same expression that was on her face last night when she came home. She’s mellow. She doesn’t scramble to cover herself. She looks at me and then turns her attention back at the paper in her hand.
“Hi,” I say.
She doesn’t take her eyes off the paper.
I walk further into the room which brings back so many memories for me. I think about all the time we spent here. The way we used to be. The feeling of home only she could give me.
Kneeling in front of her, I say, “Somehow, I knew I’d find you in here.”
She looks at me with those pretty, yet sad eyes and says, “It looks the same way I remember it. How is that possible?”
“When you never came back all those years ago, I couldn’t sleep in here. I took another bedroom for myself and left this room as it was.”
“Seriously?”
Nodding, I say, “Yes. It hurt too much to be in here knowing I wasn’t going to see you anymore.”
She inhales deeply and says, “You didn’t know at the time.”
“I had a feeling. We were close, Giada. I felt the moment that slipped away.”
A tear travels down her face.
She says, “You were right. Mom lied to me. She made the whole thing up.”
“It’s not about me being right. I just needed to get to the truth.”
She nods. More tears fall.
My heart steadily stings with pain at the sight of them.
“I’m so sorry I hit you,” she chokes out, her voice cracking as tears stream down her face. Her shoulders shake as the tearscome harder. Her cry becomes raw and filled with regret as she covers her face with her palms.
“It’s alright, sweetheart.”
“No, it’s not,” she snivels. “I was wrong. Wrong about you, wrong about her, wrong about everything.”
She glances down at the piece of paper in her hand and says, “She even had this. After all these years…”
I take the piece of paper out of her hand and read the words I wrote. The ink is old and faded, but the words mean just as much now as they did then.
She wipes her eyes and says, “Toward the end of the letter, you said you loved me, but the letter trails off and is not complete. What were you going to say?”
“I was going to say that I—that I need you. That I can’t live without you, but on the chance your mother read it, I didn’t want her to read too much into it, so I left that part out. But it remains true to this day. I still need you. I still can’t live without you, and I still love you, Giada. That’s why we’re together right now. This marriage—it’s—”
“Planned,” she says. “You made up the story about needing to be married to collect your inheritance.”
“Yes.”
“Why would you do that?”
“Because I needed to feel like you belonged to me, even if it was only for three months. And in those three months, I was going to do everything in my power to get you to fall in love with me.”
I lower my head to her lap, my forehead resting on her thighs. I search for strength, but she’s my weakness. Her mother has kept us apart for years, and right now, she needs to know the pain I’ve carried all these years. She needs to know the hole that’s in my heart. She needs to know I’m not okay, and I won’t be until we’re on the same page – not just in the same house.I need her to know that she’s my forever. That my life will not begin until she’s mine, and not by some piece of paper. By our hearts. I pull in a deep breath to conjure up the right words.
