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The recovery from Olympia’s birth was harder than it had been from Dash’s. But she had Hamish to fuss over her then, and share the joy with her. Antonia was anemic, exhausted, and the baby cried all the time. Olympia was colicky, hard to feed, lived on gripe water, which the British used for colicky babies, but it did nothing for Olympia, and she had a hard time nursing, so Antonia ended up with engorged breasts and painful mastitis, a breast infection.
Everything about the entire process was difficult with Olympia. Antonia wasn’t sure if it was due to her own depression, or the baby’s personality. But she was one of those babies parents talk about years later, remembering how hard the early months were, or even the first year. Antonia eventually ran out of milk and stopped nursing after her third breast infection. Every step of the way was hard now.
She decided not to celebrate Christmas, which would have made her feel even worse, and her children were too young to know the difference, so she gave herself a break and didn’t let anyone put up decorations. She and Hamish had decorated the house themselves the year before, and didn’t let anyone else do it.
In the bleak January weather, she made a decision. Hamish had been gone for nine months and she felt worse than ever. She was going to close his London house, but not put it on the market yet, and go back to the States and look for a country property, like a farm in Connecticut or Massachusetts, where her children could grow up. She wanted to go home, but had no home to go to. Hamish’s associates were buying his studio and equipment from her. And once she got back to the States, she was going to sell his plane. She didn’t need one. She wanted to stay home and take care of her children as they grew up. She had started writing again, but her acting career was over. She had told Fred several times. He said it was a crime to waste a talent like hers, and Hamish would have been upset about it, but he couldn’t convince her.
“I’m not an actress, Fred. I never was,” she told him. “If I’m anything, I’m a writer, and maybe one day a director, but I’m never going to act again.” She was in hiding, and wanted to become invisible again, much to the dismay of her fans.
She went to New York in February, without the children, and Lara introduced her to real estate brokers in Connecticut and the Boston area to look for a large property where her children could grow up.
It took three weeks, but she found the perfect spot in Connecticut. It was a hundred-acre farm with beautiful old trees on it, a barn, stables for horses, a small lake, and a big, beautifully built farmhouse where a family with six children had lived before they grew up and disbanded. There was a nearby private school with a good reputation, and a picturesque little town. George Washington had supposedly lived in the area at one time, and a few well-known politicians, and a famous writer lived nearby. The farm was in perfect condition. It was expensive, but with what Hamish had left her, she could afford it. She set the wheels in motion to buy it, thanked Lara for her help, had lunch with Jake between voice-overs he was recording, and flew back to London on Hamish’s plane.
Margaret and Brigid helped her organize everything for the move. Jake had told her that she was crazy to move out of the city at her age, that she couldn’t hide forever, but she insisted it would be good for her children.
She left London at the end of February, moved into a hotel in New York, and spent a month getting the house at the farm ready. The property was called Haven Farm, which suited her intentions. She was looking for a haven, a peaceful place to hide. She felt lost in the world now without Hamish to guide and protect her.
They moved at the beginning of April, almost exactly a year after Hamish’s fatal accident. It had taken her a year to come home. She gave Margaret and Brigid a year’s salary to give them time to find other jobs after years of working for Hamish. The London house was closed. And she put the plane on the market. She wasn’t going anywhere.
When Lara came to visit, she said she could see why Antonia loved it, although it was very secluded and remote for someone so young. She mentioned that she had seen Antonia’s father twice for lunch, but there was nothing there for her anymore. It was over for her. She would never be able to see him the same way again. He had killed it for her. She was dating one of her real estate clients, a widower who had bought a beautiful penthouse. And she said she was perfectly happy living on her own, just as she had been before.
Jake came to visit her at the farm too, and he thought it was beautiful, but he hated to see Antonia bury herself alive in the country. But she seemed happy there, she had a room to write in, and a hundred acres for her children to grow up on. He knew her too well.