"I'm so sorry that happened to you.I truly am," I say. It doesn't feel like it's enough though.
"Now you know I'm broken and damaged." She presses her lips together.
"Not broken, or damaged. What I'm looking at is the girl who means everything to me.She's priceless. The angel." My words make her smile.
"Why do you call me that? I'm so far from something so pure and unreachable."
It's funny she should use that word-- unreachable.
"That's what you are to me. When you were six, you played the angel in the school Christmas play.That was the first time I thought of you as the angel.The name stuck in my head and it suited you, especially when I felt like the devil and you were unreachable to me."
"I wasn't though. I was there."
"Yes. You were there. But... it wasn't as simple as being with you.Get up. I have some stuff to show you."
"What stuff?" Her brows pinch.
"You'll see, baby."
I stand first and reach out to take her hand.She takes it, gets off the bed, and I lead her up to the attic.
When I open the door and switch on the light the first thing that greets us is the very first oil painting I'd done of Candace Ricci.
It's her at twelve years old, looking through her bedroom window at her home in Stormy Creek.
Her mouth falls open and her beautiful eyes go wide.
"That's... me," she breathes.
"Yeah. That's you."
"Did your mother do this?"
I shake my head. "No, I did it."
"You?" she breathes. "You can paint?"
"I can paint."
"And you painted me?"
"I did."
"You, but I ..." Her voice trails off when she turns her head to the left and sees the other paintings of her on the wall.There are thirty of them. All are of her at different times in our liveswhen we were kids.The first one is her as the angel at six years old.
She walks over to the wall and looks at each of them, then she turns to face me when she gets to the last one.That one was the last completed painting I did of her.She would have been fifteen there.It's her standing in the meadow with her little bag.I made a point of painting her with the twinkle in her eyes I remembered, wishing it would come back.
"I don't understand. These are all me.You noticed me."
Slowly, I nod. "I was crazy about you.I still am."
She brings her hand to her heart."Oh my God... why... why didn't you tell me?"
To answer that I walk over to her.She's standing next to the unfinished painting.I always keep the cloth over that one, like I'm waiting to finish it and reveal it like the others.It's time I told her the reason why it never got finished.
I pull the cloth from over it and we both look at what was supposed to be something beautiful.
I got as far as her face and the elegance of her upper body.That's all.