I sag limply onto the bed, his hatred suddenly more than I can bear. I thought that in this moment of grief we might find a way to comfort one another, but I was wrong. My comfort is not wanted. Nor am I to receive any. In this, too, I will be alone.
The nausea rises without warning, the prickly wave of clamminess so sudden that for a moment I fear I might lose consciousness. I barely make it past Owen and into the bathroom before I’m sick. The spasms are more violent this time, threatening to turn me inside out. I drop to my knees on the cold tile floor, retching so hard my vision goes dark, then crouch there, heaving, until finally there is nothing left to bring up.
My legs are unsteady as I stand at the sink and rinse my mouth. In the mirror, my face is chalk-white and sticky with sweat, and I’m suddenly reminded of the day Anson and I met at the hospital. How he steered me into the lavatory, then stayed with me while I cleaned myself up with his handkerchief. Because of a little smear of blood. But there was no blood today. No blood for a while now. Not this month or the one before. Suddenly, I realize what I’ve been ignoring for weeks.
I’m going to have a baby.
TWENTY-NINE
SOLINE
The Reading is the foundation of The Work and must always be the Spell Weaver’s first undertaking. Some personal item shall be provided with the understanding that nothing seen will be used for the purposes of manipulation or harm.
—Esmée Roussel, the Dress Witch
I don’t know when Owen left. I only know he was gone when I came out of the bathroom, leaving me alone with my grief and this terrible new awareness. There will not be a wedding, but there will be a baby.
Enceinte. Pregnant.
The word brings a lump to my throat, like a stone lodged partway down that I can’t seem to swallow. Babies are meant to bring joy, but I feel no joy. In fact, I feel nothing. I have heaved myself empty and wept myself dry. I’m hollow, scraped raw. And yet strangely disconnected. Perhaps there’s a limit to how much pain the heart can hold.
The room is dark, and I have no sense of time. I’ve slept a little, somehow. But I’m awake now in the yawning quiet, the taste of bile still sharp in my throat. It never occurred to me that a child might result from our single night together. Maman never spoke of such things, but I always assumed it would be more difficult than that. Now I see that I’ve been naive. The headaches and queasiness, the endless fatigue. It began on the ship, nearly a month after leaving Paris. I thought it was mal de mer—seasickness. And then later, I thought it was just the toll the journey had taken on my body: days with little or no food, always on the move, the constant fear of being caught and arrested. I have been an imbécile.
I shield my eyes as I turn on the lamp and look around me, at the scattered letters, the dress box yawning emptily at the foot of the bed, my discarded wedding dress sprawled beside me, a ghost of the bride I once dreamed I was meant to be. Anson’s shaving kit—the one thing I possessed of him and promised to keep—is gone.
I think briefly of Maman’s rosary, my parting token to him, and wonder where it is now. In the hands of some SS officer who picked his pockets after shooting him? In a heap somewhere at one of the camps?
Presumed captured or killed.
I squeeze my eyes closed, but the images are still there, burned into the backs of my eyelids. Anson’s face—his sweet, beautiful face, bloodied and still. Wide eyes, the color of a calm summer sea, open and unseeing.
He can’t be gone. He mustn’t be.
If only I could see his face again, as it was the last time I saw him, I could hold on to him the way Maman held on to my father—in her heart. My hand drifts to the locket, small and warm at the hollow of my throat. If only I had a photograph of him. I could carry him with me always, and one day share it with our child.
Before I can stop myself, I have slipped from my room and out into the hallway. The house is still, the silence as complete as the darkness. I hold my breath as I move down the hall, bare feet soft on the carpet. I have never been on this side of the gallery—the family side—but I know Thia’s room is the first door on the right and that Anson’s room is across from hers.
I pause outside Thia’s door, listening. All is quiet. And for this moment, at least, I’m glad she doesn’t know about the telegram, that when the sun comes up and she opens her eyes, she won’t know what I do—that her beloved brother isn’t coming home.
I turn around to face Anson’s door, my pulse drumming in my ears as I try not to think about Owen stepping out into the hall, finding me skulking outside his son’s room. Then I remember that the worst has already happened. If Anson is truly gone, nothing he can say or do can hurt me.