“I told you. She’s sick.”

“With what?”

“A number of things. It doesn’t matter with what, Chantal. She just is.”

“So you can’t leave her now. Then when can you leave her?”

“Dammit, we’ve been over and over this for a week. Why do we have to do this when I have to catch a plane?”

“The hell with your plane. I won’t let you leave me.” Her voice had risen dangerously and her eyes were darting around the room. “You can’t go! Non, Marc-Edouard, non!” She was in tears again. He sighed as he sat down.

“Chantal, chérie, please. I told you, it won’t be for much longer. Please, darling. Try to understand. You’ve never been like this before. Why do you have to be so unreasonable now?”

“Because I’ve had it! I’ve had enough! Whatever happens, you stay married to her. Year after year after year after year. Bien merde alors, j’en ai marre. I’m fed up!”

“Must you be fed up right now?” He looked at his watch with despair. “I told you last night, if it looks as though it will be a long time, I’ll have you come over. All right?”

“For how long?”

“Oh, Chantal!” He had the look of irritation he had previously worn only with Pilar. “Voyons. Let’s see how it goes. You can stay in the States for a while, if you come over.”

“How long is a while?” But she was beginning to play now, and he saw it, with an exasperated gleam in his eye.

“As long as my foot. Will that do? Now, let’s go. I’ll call you almost every day. I’ll try to be back in a few weeks. And if not, you’ll come over. Satisfied?”

“Almost.”

“Almost?” He shouted the word, but she tilted her face up for a kiss, and he couldn’t resist.

“Toi, alors!” He kissed her, and they both laughed as they raced back into the bedroom, teasing and touching and hungry again.

“I’ll miss my plane, you know.”

“So what? And afterward let’s have dinner at Maxim’s.”

One would have easily thought that she was the pregnant one, but they most emphatically knew she was not. They had once thought she was pregnant, and it had produced such an appalling scare because of her diabetes that they had decided never to take any chances again. They couldn’t afford to. Her life was at stake. And she didn’t really mind not getting pregnant, she had never been particularly anxious to have a child. Not even Marc’s.

Ben stopped the car halfway down the street. “Here?”

She nodded, feeling as though the world were going to end. As though someone had announced the Apocalypse to them. They knew it was coming, they even knew when… but now what? Where to go? What to do? How would she live every day without him? How could she exist without the moments they shared in Carmel? How could she not wake up in that yellow bedroom, figuring out if it was his turn to make breakfast or hers? She wondered, as she sat there, if it could even be done. She looked at him long and hard and then held him tightly in her arms. She didn’t even care if anyone saw her. Let them. They would never see her hug him again. They would think it had been a mirage. She wondered for a moment if that was what she would think in years to come. Would it all seem like a dream?

Her words were a whisper in his ear. “Take good care. I love you…”

“I love you too.”

They clung to each other then, saying nothing. At last, he snapped open her door. “I don’t want you to go, Deanna. But if you stay any longer, I won’t be able to… to let you go.” She saw that his eyes were too bright, and she felt her own fill with tears. She looked down into her lap, and then quickly up at him. She had to see him, had to know he was still there. Instantly her arms were around him again.

“Ben, I love you.” She held tightly to him, then slowly peeled herself away and looked at him for a long, agonizing moment. “Can I tell you that these months have made my whole lifetime worthwhile?”

“You can.” He smiled at her and kissed the tip of her nose. “And can I tell you to get the hell out of my car?” She looked at him in surprise. Then she laughed.

“You cannot.”

“Well, I figure there’s not going to be an easy way to do this so we might as well have a good laugh.” And she did, and at the same time started to cry again.

“Jesus, I’m a mess.”

“Yes, you are.” He said it with an appreciative nod and a grin that gave way to a slightly sobered look in his eye. “And so am I. But frankly, my dear, I think we’ve got one hell of a lot of style.” And then, with a lopsided grin, he bent to kiss her once more, looked at her very hard, and said, “Go.”

She nodded, touched his face. With her hands clenched into tight fists she slid out of the car, looked at him for an interminable moment, turned, and walked away. As soon as she had turned her back, while she still fumbled in her bag for her keys, she heard him drive away. But she never turned, never looked, never saw, she simply buried him in her heart and walked back inside the house she would share for the rest of her life. With Marc.

25

“‘Good morning, darling. You slept well?” He looked down at her in bed.

“Did you miss your plane?” There was no mention of the past week, of the fact that she had literally run away from Paris.

“I did. Stupidly. I couldn’t get a cab, there was a traffic jam, ten thousand tiny incidents, and I had to wait six hours for the next flight. How do you feel?”

“Decent.”

“No more than that?”

She shrugged in answer. She felt like hell, and she wished she were dead. All she wanted was Ben. But not like this. Not with Marc-Edouard’s baby.

“I want you to see the doctor today,” Marc said. “Shall I have Dominique make an appointment for you, or do you want to do it yourself?”

“Either way.”

Why so docile? He didn’t like what he saw. She looked haggard and pale, nervous and unhappy, and yet indifferent to everything he said. “I want you to see him today,” he repeated.

“Fine. Can I go by myself, or will you have Dominique take me?” Her eyes spat fire into his.

“Never mind that. You’ll go today?”

“Count on it. And where are you going today, Athens or Rome?”

She walked past him into the bathroom and quietly closed the door. It was going to be a delightful eight months, Marc thought grimly. When the baby came a month later than Deanna expected, he was simply going to tell her it was overdue. That happened all the time, babies born three weeks late. He had thought about it all the way over on the plane.

He walked to the bathroom and spoke firmly at the closed door. “I’ll be at my office if you need me. And be sure you see the doctor. Today. Understood?”

“Yes. Perfectly.” She kept her voice steady so he wouldn’t know she was crying. She couldn’t go on like this. She couldn’t live with it. It was too much. She had to leave him, to find her way back to Ben, with or without this damned child. But she had an idea. When she heard the front door slam, she emerged and went directly to the phone. The nurse told her he was busy but when she had the woman explain who was on the phone, he took the call.

“Deanna?” He sounded surprised. She rarely called anymore.

“Hi, Dr. Jones.” Her voice sagged with relief just to hear him. He would help her. He always had before. “I have a problem. A very large problem. Can I come see you?” He could hear the urgency in her voice.

“What did you have in mind, Deanna? Today?”

“Will you hate me if I say yes?”

“I won’t hate you, but I may tear out the little hair I’ve got left. Can it wait?”

“No. I’ll go crazy.”

“All right. Be here in an hour.”

She was, and he settled back in the huge red-leather chair that she always thought of when she thought of him. “So?”

“I’m pregnant.” His eyes didn’t waver. Nothing moved in his face.

“How do you feel about it?”

“Awful. It’s the wrong time… and everything about it is wrong.”

“Marc feels that way too?”

What did he have to do with it? What did it matter? But she had to be honest. “No. He’s pleased. But there are a thousand reasons why I think it’s wrong. For one thing, I’m too old.”

“Technically, you’re not. But do you feel too old to cope with a small child?”

“It’s not so much that, but… I’m just too old to go through it again. What if the baby dies, what if something like that happens again?”

“If that’s what you’re worrying about, you don’t have to, and you know it. You know as well as I that the two incidents were totally unrelated, they were just tragic accidents. It won’t happen again. But I think what you’re telling me, Deanna, is that you just don’t want this baby. Never mind the reasons. Or are there reasons you don’t want to tell me?”

“I… yes. I-I don’t want Marc’s child.”

For a moment the good doctor was stunned. “Any special reason, or is that a whim of the moment?”

“It’s not a whim. I’ve been thinking of leaving him all summer.”

“I see. Does he know?” he asked. She shook her head. “That does complicate things, doesn’t it? But the baby is his?” He would never have asked her that ten years before, but now things were apparently different, and he asked with such kindness that she didn’t mind.

“The baby is his.” She hesitated and then went on. “Because I’m two months pregnant. If I were less pregnant, it wouldn’t be his.”

“How do you know that you are two months pregnant?”

“They told me in France.”

“They could be wrong, but they probably aren’t. Why don’t you want the baby? Because it’s Marc’s?”

“Partially. And I don’t want to be tied to him any more than I am. If I have the baby, I can’t just get up and leave.”

“Not very easily, but you could. But then what would you do?”

“Well, I can hardly go back to the other man with Marc’s child.”