We’d taken it to a jeweler in Mexico after she found it. He told her it hadn’t come from that area. He couldn’t explain how she’d found it at the bottom of a cenote.
Bobbi kept it with her wherever she went, slept with it beside her, couldn’t seem to stop looking at it. Sometimes I even caught her talking to it.
It was silly, really, but I felt a little jealous. Jealous of a rock.
Do you think that’s foolish? No? I did. But I couldn’t help it. We feel what we feel, don’t we, Isabelle?
We talked while I was painting. I asked her to tell me what really happened down in the cenote. If she’d actually heard the voice of the dead man.
She nodded.
“Well, what did he say?” I asked.
Bobbi smiled. Said I wouldn’t believe her if she told me.
“Try me,” I said.
Bobbi looked at me then, really looked at me, her eyes pulling me in. “I really love you, you know,” she said.
I knew she did. And I loved her too. But I told her it didn’t matter.
None of it mattered. Because she was leaving.
I was being petty, I know. And I didn’t want to ruin it, our last day together, by blaming her. But the words were out and I felt rotten as soon as I’d said them.
Bobbi was silent for a minute, holding perfectly still. Then she said, “What do you expect me to do?”
“Nothing,” I told her, keeping my eyes on the painting, not on her. “I don’t expect anything.”
And I didn’t. I wasn’t a fool. I knew how the world worked. I knew we weren’t going to ride off into the sunset together, live happily ever after in our own little house with a white picket fence.
I looked at her around the edge of the canvas. Bobbi, still clinging to the stone, holding it tight against her chest, gave me a bittersweet smile. “Here’s what’s going to happen,” she said. “What the voice told me down there in the water.”
At the time, I didn’t believe some ghost voice in the water had actually talked to her. Bobbi had a flair for the dramatic. She liked to make things up—to take little bits of truth and embellish them.
“I’m going to California. I’m going to get a small acting role that will lead to a bigger role. I’m going to be famous.”
I asked her about me, wondering what, if any, role I might have in this vision of Bobbi’s future. “What am I supposed to do while you’re off getting famous?” I demanded.
“You’re going to stay here and marry David,” Bobbi said.
I threw down my paintbrush. It was a ridiculous suggestion and I was furious with her.
David was a well-meaning, shy boy I’d dated on and off for years. He lived in Woodstock and had studied art at Yale. I’d relied on him when I needed a date for a party or function, when it was expected that I wouldn’t just show up with Bobbi. Like I said—times were different. People expected a well-rounded young Vassar girl to have a boyfriend. I had David.
Bobbi started going on and on about how perfect David was for me, listing all these reasons. “He’s sweet, his family has money, he’s an artist, and he’s over the moon about you. Just read his letters if you need any reminding.”
David wrote me a letter every week, professing his love, telling me I was all he thought about, making plans for what we’d do when we were next together: a new restaurant he couldn’t wait to take me to, a tour of art galleries in the city. Bobbi and I had read all his letters together, giggling. “Poor David,” we’d said.
We pitied him. We felt sorry for him and made fun of him. And now here was Bobbi telling me I was supposed to marry him?
“But I don’t love him,” I told her.
“You will,” Bobbi said. “And remember, just because you marry David and decide to love him doesn’t mean you have to stop loving me. Whatever we do, wherever we go, whoever we marry, we’ll always have each other. No one can take that away.”
Then she held up the stone, looked at it, then at me. “You’ll always have my heart,” she said. “And I, yours. And knowing that—it’ll just have to be enough.”
TWENTY-SIX
