then they went back to bed for the afternoon.
And they called Marya to thank her for the house and tell her how much they loved it.
“I’m so glad you do,” she said happily. “It’s very romantic, isn’t it?” She giggled like a girl, and Francesca smiled.
“Yes, it is,” she agreed.
“I never realized that until recently. I just thought it was a pretty house.”
Francesca knew that they would never forget the days they spent there. They made themselves go to a local tavern for dinner, where Marya said the food was very good, and she was right. And they took a walk in her orchards afterward by moonlight, and then they came back and sat on the porch, and huddled together and kissed. Neither of them wanted to go back to New York. They wanted to stay there forever. She envied Marya the house, and would have loved to spend weeks there with Chris instead of just a few days.
She smiled as she looked up at him, as they sat on the porch swing, swaying slowly. “You know, for two relationship-phobics, I think we’re doing pretty well. What do you think?”
“I think you’re turning me into a sex maniac. It’s all I can think of,” he confessed with a grin. “Are you putting something in my food?”
“Yeah, saltpeter. I can hardly sit down.” They both laughed. It was the perfect honeymoon weekend and just what they needed. It was the final bond to each other, and the only one they’d been missing. They had the friendship they’d built over many months, the romance that had sprung up between them since the summer, and now this, the union of their bodies to complete what they felt for each other. The circle of their love was complete.
“Would you ever want to get married, Francesca?” he asked as he held her.
“I never have before. I was afraid I’d end up like my mother, married fourteen times.”
“Be nice. Only five,” he teased her.
“I figured once was too many. My father cheated on everybody. My mother married everybody. I never wanted to do either, and I was afraid to have kids,” she said honestly. “That seemed like too much to me. What if you screw it up? You ruin a whole human being.” Chris was struck by the irony of it, as he listened to her. She would have made a wonderful mother but hadn’t had children because she was afraid to hurt someone or do something wrong. And Kim, who was a walking minefield and human disaster area, hadn’t hesitated to have Ian, and wanted more. Once he realized what a mess she was, Chris wouldn’t let her, although he would have loved to have more children. “I think Ian is the first child who has ever made me wish I’d had some of my own. But I’m still not convinced you have to get married to have them. That’s a double jeopardy I was never ready to face.”
“I think it’s nicer if you are. It’s a statement about commitment and believing in the other person.” He thought about it for a minute and then shrugged. “What do I know? Look what a catastrophe my marriage was.” But look at who he had married.
“It probably helps if you marry the right person.”
“I couldn’t have married a worse one. I must have been blind, but she talked a good game, and we were both young. I’d know better now.”
“Would you ever marry again?” She didn’t think he would and was stunned by his answer.
“I would with you,” he said softly, and she didn’t respond. It was a long time before she did.
“That terrifies me. I don’t want to screw up what we have.”
“If it’s right, it makes it better. If it’s wrong, it makes you wish you’d never been born. I can’t imagine feeling that way with you.” She kissed him and put a finger to his lips then. She didn’t want him to say anything she wasn’t ready to hear. But he told her he loved her that night, in the big four-poster bed. And she told him she loved him too. They fell asleep in each other’s arms.
They woke up when the sun rose the next morning, and had breakfast on the porch. It was cold, but the air was crisp, and they drank coffee in their bathrobes and sat on the porch swing again under a blanket. She was thinking about their conversation of the night before, about marriage, but she didn’t mention it, and neither did he. It was also on Chris’s mind, but he didn’t want to unnerve her, so he didn’t bring it up again.
They made love again that afternoon, and changed the sheets on the four-poster for Marya. They had done their dishes, and Francesca left her a note on the kitchen table. “Thank you for the most beautiful weekend of my life.” Chris looked at it and crossed out the last two words and wrote “our lives.” She smiled and kissed him.
“Thank you too,” she said to him, and he carried their bags out to his car.
They turned on the alarm and locked the door. They drove away just as the sun was setting, and Francesca leaned over and kissed him, and he smiled. “I love you, Chris.”
“I love you too, Francesca.” He reached over and touched her cheek, and they drove in silence for a while. There was so much to think about, and remember. Everything felt exactly the way things were meant to be. Neither of them had ever felt that way before.
Chapter 19
FOR THE NEXT few weeks, all Francesca and Chris could think about was the wonderful weekend they had had in Vermont. Marya was thrilled that they had used the house and said they could go there anytime they liked.
They had been planning to behave until they could go away again, but by the next day they realized how impossible that was for both of them. They waited for Ian to fall asleep, and then Chris sneaked upstairs to be with her. They locked her door and made love as passionately as they had in Vermont. And afterward he went back downstairs to Ian.
Chris complained about it one night when he had to leave her. He hated to get out of bed, and go back downstairs and spend the night without her. But they had no other choice.
“You can’t just move up here and leave him down there,” she said sensibly. “Then he’d resent us.”
“I know. I just miss you when I’m downstairs. You’re too far away.” She loved that he felt that way, and she did too.
They overslept one morning, and Ian nearly caught them. She called Marya on her cell phone and asked her to lure him down to the kitchen. A few minutes later Chris walked in with the newspaper under his arm, and claimed he’d been picking it up outside. Ian never suspected that he’d been upstairs in bed with Francesca, and without Marya’s help, they would have been trapped.
Sometimes after they made love, they took a bath together in her huge tub and just talked. Most of the time, afterward, they wound up back in bed. They were golden days. It was a November they both knew they would never forget. And everyone in the house was excited about Thanksgiving.
Thalia had announced to Francesca that she was going to spend it with friends in San Francisco. There was a man they wanted her to meet there who had a big yacht. And her father and Avery were going to Sun Valley to spend the holiday with old friends. Chris’s family was gathering in Martha’s Vineyard for the holiday, as they always did, but he wanted to stay in New York with her this year. Charles-Edouard and Marya offered to cook a traditional turkey dinner, and Chris and Francesca accepted with glee. Francesca had nowhere to go, and Chris didn’t want to go home. He wanted to have Thanksgiving with Francesca and Ian, at home. The house on Charles Street was their home now.
The meal Charles-Edouard and Marya prepared for them was a feast. There was every possible kind of vegetable and trimming, a turkey that looked like a photograph in a magazine, and some touches that were purely French. Others were traditional, cranberries, and chestnut puree, mashed potatoes, biscuits, peas, carrots, spinach, asparagus with Marya’s fabulous hollandaise. It was easily the best Thanksgiving the Americans in the group had ever had. They could hardly move when they left the table, and Charles-Edouard and Chris stood in the garden, smoking their cigars and drinking Chateau d’Yquem, their favorite sauterne. Charles-Edouard had definitely introduced them to some of the finer things in life. Chris loved his Cuban cigars but never smoked them in the house, and only one after a great meal, like now.
Marya and Francesca cleaned up in the kitchen, and Ian fell asleep on the bed in Marya’s room, watching TV. Chris introduced Charles-Edouard to American football, and they were a cozy group. They weren’t four strangers as they had been in the beginning. They were two couples now and a child. They were a solid unit of people who loved each other. For Francesca, it was a Thanksgiving where blessings were easy to count. In spite of the tragedy with
