We’re apart now, but we shouldn’t hide from each other.  If you need anything at all, something that I didn’t mention, everything here is just as much yours as mine and always will be.

Missing you so much and thinking of you every moment of the day,

Always,

Bette

As she waited at the signal light, Bette briefly closed her eyes.  She wasn’t praying, but hoping and wishing that a corner could be turned.  Her eyes blinked open and when the light changed, she drove on.

* * * * *

“Hi, Marina,” Bette called out as she entered the Planet.  She was on her way to work, but stopped in for a quick bite and to take a last look at some work in her briefcase before her morning meetings.  She was dressed in a classic navy blue single-breasted Brooks Brothers blazer and matching gabardine slacks made from Italian wool.  Her sky blue silk blouse showed just enough cleavage to be *****, but not over the top.  Bette picked out a cheese Danish from the pastry table on the counter and poured a French Roast coffee into her mug. 

“Good morning.”

Bette walked to a table in the center of the restaurant and sat down.  It had been two days since her note to Tina and there had been no reply when she returned home, no phone call, no accidental meeting.  Bette was struggling more with the depression, but she didn’t want to give in to Zoloft.  Not yet.  She could hold out.  Suzanne had questioned her about her weight loss the afternoon before.  She couldn’t hide it, but didn’t know how to stop it.  The therapist and client had spent twenty minutes discussing the side effects of the medication and Bette was certain that if she could, she would work through this time drug-free.  In the meantime, she could eat Danishes every morning and Ensure at lunch to get a few of the pounds that were melting off of her back on. 

Today, she had her black, leather Dolce & Gabbana briefcase filled with information about a budding folk artist living in Birmingham, Alabama.  He used found materials and the work was both complex in its vision and understated in its approach.  She was fascinated by the photographs of the work and thought a summer exhibit would be an appropriate slot for him.  Bette pulled out photo after photo as she sipped her coffee and made notes into her voice recorder.