Page 47 of The Singing Trees
But! And there was a but ...
As she’d come to the decision to leave him, she could feel the need building back up inside like a volcano rumbling. The paper clipped to her easel with dark-green smears was no longer taunting her. It was pulling her in. She was ready. The only thing stopping her now was ending this relationship and moving on. This breakup hurt, more than she was letting on, but she also felt a sense of pride rising up. She was making the hard choice, but the right one. The Sharon Maxwell choice—the choice Annalisa’s mother should have made. No more being vulnerable, setting herself up for further pain.
She had a job to do, a commitment: to herself and to her destiny. She was to go, brush in hand, to Portland and realize her calling. She was to do whatever it took to get onto the walls of Sharon Maxwell’s warehouse for an April show.
“Don’t tell me you think this is working,” Annalisa finally said, crossing her arms, knowing nothing he could say would change her mind.
He was so frustrated that he balled his hands into fists. “Of course I think it’s working. None of what happened has changed how I feel about you. And I’ve thought long and hard about leaving, and I’m stillin. I’ve spent my whole life—or a lot of it, anyway—trying to find you. No way I’m letting you go. Emma will be okay, and she’ll find her way—we’ll help her. But I want to go to Portland with you. I want us to start our life.”
They crossed the street together. “Thomas, you want a normal life with a wife and kids and a dental practice and a picket fence. I can’t give you that. Don’t you get it?” Maybe that wasn’t exactly true, but she needed to put up a wall that he couldn’t break down.
“Oh, I get it, and I’ve already told you ... I can let all of that go.”
Telling him that she couldn’t paint wasn’t enough, nor was assuring him she wasn’t worth the cost of letting go of his family and education—her point proven by his last statement.
When they reached the other side, they swung a left to circle back to her house. “That’s what you think now, but trust me, one day you will grow to resent me for it. When we’re fighting for having gotten in each other’s way, and when you’ve lost your family for good—and your inheritance—you will resent me.” She quieted as they passed a shirtless man putting up a new mailbox. When they’d gotten far enough away, she whispered, “And I would resent you and hate myself.”
“Don’t you see?” he asked. “You’ll never be a great artist until you open yourself up to—”
She stopped and turned to him. “To what? To love?” As brilliant as he was, he was still naive.
“Yes, to love,” he said with certainty, nothing short of stabbing her heart with a dagger.
She looked up into his eyes, trying to show him. “Don’t you see that I do love you? I love you so much that I’m doing what’s best for you and your sister—even if you don’t know it.” Making the decision earlier had been much easier than telling him now, and so much of her wanted to leap into his arms. But she pushed it all away with the reminder that love required sacrifice.
“It’s not your job to decide my life,” he argued. “Or to protect Emma’s.”
She sliced a hand through the air, forcing herself to be strong. “Trust me; one day we’ll know that ending us now was the right thing, and I’ll always look back on these days, remembering how much I loved you.”
He ran a hand through his hair, pulling at it. “I’d never look back at us with regret; that’s for sure.”
Desperately hoping she was making the right decision, she started walking again. The problem was so much easier to wrap her head around when he wasn’t by her side.
As he started to follow, she said, “I’m worried that I would regret us if we didn’t end it. Look, I’m making the responsible decision. For both of us. I am going to Portland by myself, and you are going to finish Weston and go on to dental school in New York, and then you’re going to find a woman a million times better than ...”
She stumbled through the last of her words, choking on them. Her heart bled as she said, “Better than me.” The idea of Thomas being with another girl was hell, pure hell, and she batted away the thought.
His agony collected between his eyebrows, and his cheeks quivered. “You don’t believe any of this, Anna, and I don’t know whether it’s because of your parents or because of mine—or because you’re just afraid—but youdon’tbreak up with someone you love.”
She stopped again and faced him. “You do, Thomas.” She took his hand, his touch like that dagger twisting in her heart. “That’s exactly what you have to do sometimes.”
Shaking his head, he said, “And who makes you the expert?”
“Oh, I’m no expert. But I’m not an idiot either. All you have to do is look at what’s happening. Your sister is suicidal and needs you. Your mom probably does too. And you’re talking about abandoning them and your education and your inheritance for a girl who can’t promiseyou the things you want. I have to keep painting; that’s all that I know right now.”
Thomas pressed his eyes and lips closed and let his head fall. She’d crushed him. Who was she kidding? She’d crushed herself too.
After a long breath, he said, “To break up with someone you love is nothing but the wrong decision. In every case. It’s never going to be easy. Jesus, Anna. If it wasn’t your parents and mine, or my sister, or me leaving Weston, it would be something else.”
“Maybe.” He should have gone to law school because he sure could lay out a case with emotion, and she was dying inside.
“The thing is,” he continued, “when you love someone, then you have each other, and you can face all these things together. That answer isn’t in ending us; it’s in finding a way through it together.”
A tear slid down her cheek. “I don’t see it that way. Things change. What if we fall out of love? Then all the destruction we’ve left in our path will be for nothing. I’m not ready to give up painting, and if we stayed together, I’ll lose my drive, and I will grow to resent myself for not being strong right now, and I’ll certainly come to resent you. I love you too much to ever let that happen.”
His eyes were blue today, and it was the saddest blue in the world.
“Let me go,” she whispered, letting his hand fall from hers.
