Page 16 of Christmas Past
“Do you believe in love?” she asked him. That day at the creek, he’d said he thought he loved his fiancée. Based on a description he'd read.
“I believe parents love their children – to an extent, and some more than others. But what they ‘love’ is that those bodies are their own creations. Biologically for most. But also in the raising of them. A painter doesn’t have to make his paints and brush and canvas to claim the finished piece as his own creation.” He sat forward. “I believe that some siblings experience a warm familial connection to each other based on shared biological and often environmental components. Mostly I believe that what people call ‘love’ is really a feeling of well-being they get because the other person is somehow meeting their needs. And when they no longer meet those needs, the feeling dissipates, evaporates, until there isn’t even vapor evidence that it ever existed.”
Tears sprang to Bella’s eyes. He was just wrong.
Dead wrong.
“So why do you think Camille’s parents are so frantic to find her? If, as you say, it’s only about the child meeting their needs, then when those needs aren’t being met, the feelings will dissipate, right? And they can make, or adopt, another child."
Looking contemplative, he leaned an elbow on the counter and sat forward. He’d taken off his jacket. Even loosened the beige tie. He was still wearing his holster though. And his radio and cell phone.
“You want to know how I know love exists?” she asked him when he looked about ready to give her another well thought out and factual expostulation.
“How?”
“Because I cry for my mom and my sisters often. I miss them so much it hurts. I’m not like them. I can’t live the life they do. But I love them. Way down to my core. I ache for them. I worry about them. The thought of anything bad happening to them makes me sad. And if they ever called me, I’d pick up the phone. More than that, I’d die for them. My soul and their souls…they’re connected on a personal level. That’s love.”
~*~
Chad couldn’t figure her out.
Nighttime, and deathly cold, were soon approaching. And there he sat. Listening to a gypsy espouse about love.
A very compelling gypsy. One who spoke softly. Who spoke to the plants she grew. One who seemed to appreciate every utensil, every possession that touched her hands. One who teared up more than anyone he’d ever known.
She was sensitive.
And beautiful, too. The long silky hair – even the color of it – brown with hints of red shining out from it – the big blue eyes – he noticed them.
Other than a couple of two or three minute bouts of fear – one accompanied by a strong sensation of hunger, he’d had nothing from her in more than three hours of sitting there.
“Don’t you ever get lonely?” Talking was better than just sitting.
She stared at him with a hint of that vacant look.
“Living like a hermit…how do you do it?”
It wasn’t a Camille question. But he wanted the answer.
Knew it was important. Instinctively knew. Because people had basic survivalinstincts. Not a sixth sense. Or connected...souls.
He’d stopped believing in those a long time ago.
“My whole life…I’ve never been alone. Even at night we slept in the same space. Either the living room of the trailer with its fold down table bed and fold down couch bed side by side, or piled in a row in the back of a truck with a camper top, or piled in a row in a tent on the ground…”
He looked around. And thought of the two bedrooms he’d seen down the hall. Both with double beds. She’d rented the place furnished. And after a year of successfully selling her wares, had bought it. The beds had both looked equally undisturbed. And he wondered if she used them.
“I’ve spent the past two years learning about my own thoughts. Figuring out which are mine, which are in my head because my family put them there, which ones I can trust.”
He felt like he’d been shot as her words hit him. He understood completely. She made clear, cold sense. Everything he knew and had ever read about mind manipulation…and recovering from it…she was textbook.
And if that was the case then how did he explain her feelings as being anything other than exactly what she said? The result of an overactive imagination? Of a mind that spent too much time alone?
A coincidence?
The woman messed with him. He’d known it the first day he’d met her. At first, he’d found the experience kind of cool in its uniqueness. That day, there’d been a new dimension to his life. One he remembered liking.
A tear dropped to the counter at the same time Chad noticed the pestle in Bella’s hand start to shake. A glance at her face told him that she was having another episode. They weren’t faked, he’d figured out that much. Whether they were figments of her own mind or not, he didn’t know, but no way could she fake that vacant look in her eyes.
