Chapter 2

As Bette drove away from Whistler
that awful night headed home to LA she knew from the fire that burned in Tina’s
eyes that her relationship with the beautiful blond and her daughter was over.

Never again would Tina let her
within 900 yards of herself or Angie after Bette had disappeared with the sweet
child who represented the reality of the love in their eight year relationship.

The way she saw it she only had two
choices. Accept her loss of them and let it destroy her or try and put it behind
her and move forward without them in her life.

The second choice was easier said
than done because the pain she was now feeling was worse than dying.

But to Bette her hope sprang
eternal and one day just maybe she and Angie’s lives would connect again.

Although she doubted it because her
beautiful child was so young but she had to hang on to something to move
forward and this was it.

Her time at CU had allowed her to
gain experience in the academic world and so she decided she would apply for
the open position of a Dean at Yale, her old alma mater.

In the mean time she split all of
the assets she and Tina had acquired over the years 50/50 with her. Since Tina
would accept nothing from her at this time she had left it up to her attorney
to contact Tina at a later date to present her with the check for a sizeable
amount.

Saying goodbye to her friends and
family would be hard but not as hard as continuing to live in LA with all of its
memories. So off to New Haven, Connecticut she moved to put her past behind
her.

As time moved on her friends
stopped informing her of seeing Tina downtown in some boutique only to watch
her turn and walk the other way as if they were strangers when she spotted
them.

The loss of her love and that of
her family changed Bette.

That’s not to say she didn’t seek
the occasional comfort of the arms of another lover. But she always made sure
it never developed into a relationship.

She didn’t give it time too.

She always cut them loose before it
really even began. If she had been accused of being married to her work back in
LA then if anyone formed an opinion about her now they would have to say the
relationship between her work and personal life had went beyond a marriage into
a merging of entities.