deaths. Annabelle was just one more in a sea of casualties and tragedies caused by the war.
She checked into a small hotel in Nice, and bought herself several black dresses in larger sizes, and was shocked to note that once she no longer wore the restrictive bindings, her stomach was surprisingly large. Not in Hortie’s league, but it was obvious that she was having a baby, and there was no reason to conceal it now. With a wedding band on her finger, and the black dress of a widow, she looked like the respectable woman she was, and the sadness anyone could have seen in her eyes was real.
She would have liked to visit Dr. Graumont at the medical school, but she didn’t feel she could. Later, she would reappear with the baby, with her story of the man she had married and who was then killed. But it was all too new for now. She didn’t feel ready to face anyone until after the baby. And she was not yet sure how to explain that she would not change her name. She would figure it out later. For now, she had to find a place to live, and one day she went back to Antibes, and the little church she loved so much. It was a sailors’ chapel and had a full view of the port and the Maritime Alps. She was leaving the church when she asked the guardian if she knew of any houses in the area, preferably to rent. And the woman shook her head, and then cocked her head to one side with a pensive look.
“I don’t think so,” she said, in the heavy accent of the South. Annabelle’s French was so smooth by then that no one would have suspected she wasn’t from Paris, or any of the northern cities in France. “There’s a family that lived here before the war. They moved back to Lyon, and both their sons were killed. They haven’t been here since, and I don’t think they’ll ever come back. Their boys loved it here. It would break their hearts.” She told Annabelle where the house was. It was in walking distance from the church, and was a small, pretty villa that looked like it had been a summer home. There was an old man tending the grounds, and he nodded when Annabelle spoke to him, and asked if there was a possibility that the house was for rent. He said he didn’t think it was, but was willing to write to the owners for her. He said all the furniture and their belongings were still there, if that was a problem for her. And she assured him that it wasn’t, and in fact she would prefer it.
He could see that she was heavy with child, seven months pregnant by then, and she said she was a widow. She told him she would be grateful to rent it for as long as they wanted, till the end of the year perhaps. She was hoping to go back to school for the fall term, or January at the latest. In September, the baby would be five months old, and she could go back to medical school, if she could make some arrangement for the baby. She might even be able to travel back and forth from this house, if she could find a vehicle to get there. She left the name of her hotel, and the caretaker said he would contact her when he heard from the owners, one way or the other. She hoped he’d feel sorry for her, and press the owners to rent her the house.
And on the way back to Nice, she thought to herself that she could stay at the hotel if she had to, although it wasn’t an ideal set-up for a baby, but it was neat and clean. A house would have been better for her, but if she couldn’t find one, she could stay where she was.
For the next several weeks, she went walking every day in Nice. She walked on the beach, ate as decently as possible, and slept long hours. She found a local doctor through the hospital, and went to see him, telling him the same fabricated tale that she was a war widow. He was kind and sympathetic, and she told him she wanted to give birth at home. She didn’t want to run the risk of running into any of the doctors she knew at the hospital, through her medical school. She didn’t tell the doctor why, but he was willing to deliver her at home.
In March she came back from a walk one day, and found a message from Gaston, the caretaker of the house in Antibes. He asked her to come and see him, which she did. He had good news for her. The owners were sympathetic to her, and happy to rent her the house. They might even be willing to sell it to her eventually, although they hadn’t decided yet. As he had suspected, they said they had too many memories of their children there, and it would be too sad for them to return. For now, they were willing to rent it to her for six months and decide the rest later. He offered to show her around, and she was delighted by what she saw. There was a sunny master bedroom of cozy proportions, and two smaller bedrooms close to it. The three bedrooms shared a single bathroom, which didn’t bother her. The bathroom was old and tiled, and had an enormous bathtub, which appealed to her. And downstairs there was a living room and dining room, and a small glassed-in sunroom that gave onto a porch. It was the perfect size for her and a baby, and maybe a young girl to help take care of the baby later. For now, all she wanted was to be alone.
She penned a letter of agreement to the owners, and said she would have her bank handle the transfer of funds. Gaston was very pleased and congratulated her, he said it would be nice to have life in the house again, and his wife would be happy to come and clean for her and even help her with the baby when it was born. She thanked him and left and went to a bank in Nice that afternoon. She introduced herself to the manager, and had him send a wire to her bank at home, informing them where she was. All they needed to know was where to send her money, since she had closed her account in VillersCotterets when she left. They had no idea why she was in Nice or what was about to happen to her there, and she couldn’t help wondering how many babies Hortie had had since she left. She still missed her old friend. However badly Hortie had betrayed her, she had done it out of weakness. It didn’t stop Annabelle from caring about her, although they would never be friends again. Even if she went back one day, too much had happened since.
Annabelle moved into the house above Cap d’Antibes on the fourth of April. The doctor said the baby would come soon, although he had no idea when. Annabelle was large by then, and she walked slowly in the hills every day, and went to the church she loved and admired the view. Florine, Gaston’s wife, was cleaning house for her, and cooked occasionally. And Annabelle spent her nights reading her old medical books. She still had mixed emotions about the child. It had been conceived in such violence and anguish, it was hard to imagine not remembering that each time she saw it. But destiny had given them to each other. She had thought of contacting the viscount’s family to advise them of it, but she owed them nothing, and if they were as wayward and dishonorable as their son, she wanted nothing to do with them. She and the baby would have each other, and needed no one else.
In the third week of April, Annabelle went for a long walk, stopped at the church as she always did, and sat down heavily on a bench to admire the view. She had lit a candle for her mother, and prayed for Josiah. She had heard nothing from him now in more than two years, and had no idea where he and Henry were, whether still in Mexico or back in New York. He had let her go, and kept no contact with her. He wanted her to be free to find a new life, but he could never have remotely imagined the twists and turns of fate she had endured.
She walked slowly back to the house in the dappled sunlight that afternoon, thinking about all of them, Josiah, Hortie, her mother, father, Robert. It was as though she felt them all near her, and when she got back to the house, she went to her bedroom and lay down. Florine had left, and Annabelle fell into a gentle sleep. Much to her surprise, it was after midnight when she woke. She had a cramp in her back that woke her, and suddenly she felt a stabbing pain low in her belly, and knew instantly what it was. There was no one to fetch the doctor for her, and she had no telephone, but she wasn’t frightened as she lay there. She was sure that it was a simple process and she could do it alone. But as the night deepened and the pains worsened, she wasn’t as sure. It seemed cruel beyond belief that she had suffered when she conceived the child, and now she would have to suffer again, for a child with no father, whom she didn’t want. All those years she had longed for Josiah’s baby, it had never occurred to her that a child would come into her life like this.
She writhed with each contraction, clutching at the sheets. She saw the sun come up at dawn, and was bleeding heavily by then. The pains were agonizing, and she was beginning to feel as though she were drowning and might die. It made her think of the horror stories Hortie had told her, and the terrible births she had endured. She was just beginning to panic when Florine appeared in her bedroom doorway. She had heard her from downstairs, and ran up the stairs. Annabelle was lying in bed looking wild-eyed, unable to speak with the pain that had gone on all night. She had been in labor for eight hours.
Florine walked quickly into the room, and gently lifted the covers from her, and spread old sheets under her that they had put aside for this purpose. She made gentle cooing sounds to Annabelle and told her things were going well. She looked and said she could see the baby’s head.
“I don’t care,” Annabelle said miserably. “I want it to come out…” She let out a scream then, as the baby seemed to move forward for an instant, and then back. Florine ran downstairs to find Gaston, and told him to bring the doctor quickly. But nothing she was seeing alarmed her, it was going well. And she knew from other births she’d seen that it could go on for a long time. The worst was yet to come, and the spot of the baby’s head she saw was no bigger than a small coin.
Annabelle lay in bed crying, as Florine bathed her forehead in lavender-scented cool cloths, and then finally Annabelle wouldn’t even let her do that. She wanted no one to touch her, and she was crying out in pain. It seemed
