“Anyway,” Bette continued, after a long pause, “His loneliness, and his deep regret at having given up on his own relationship with someone, because of a choice he’d made while he was still in Europe, during the decade or so after the war, set me on my own path to seek out what it was I wanted out of my life.”

Tina pulled Bette’s hand to her lips, and slowly kissed each finger.  It was a search that led both of them, eventually, to a memorable Valentine’s Day event in their new home, during which they’d proposed to each other, surprising each, and all their friends and family members who had witnessed the emotional scene.  

 “I ended up buying a couple of paintings from him, but I think he gifted me with something much more important,” Bette continued.  “We became good friends, and he opened my eyes to what could happen if I chose wrongly.  I didn’t realize it at the time, but I realized it many months after, when we met in Paris.  It was right after you’d told me your story about Scott, and you had gone to run a bath for yourself, you remember?  As I looked out into the garden, I remembered what he’d shared with me, and I began to combine those reflections with my own experiences during those long months we had been apart from each other.  All of a sudden, things just crystallized into a revelation so fundamental, but so simple.”  She paused, and looked deeply into Tina’s eyes.

“What, baby?” Tina asked softly, as she took hold of Bette’s other hand.

“You, T,” Bette said quietly. “You are the key to happiness, to all that is meaningful in my life.  How I look at the world, how I consider our future, what I consider beautiful, and even how I look at art.”

They leaned their foreheads gently together, shut their eyes, and breathe in slowly together.  It was the same for Tina.  Nothing in the world made sense without the brunette.

“We should talk about the art we own, T,” Bette started to say, when they heard Peggy Peabody exclaim twenty feet further down the hall from them.

“So there you lovebirds are!” she exclaimed, walking towards them.