Summer’s End

“Would you rather we just go back to Paris?” Her hand trembled as she rested it in his, and he looked sharply at her again. Paris-and Chantal. Yes, he wanted to go back. But first he had to know that Deanna was all right.

“We’ll go back to Paris once you’ve seen a doctor.” She was about to protest again, but a wave of dizziness swept over her. She put her head back on the seat. He looked at her nervously and stepped on the gas. She didn’t argue, she didn’t have the strength.

It was another ten minutes before they pulled up in front of a small efficient-looking building with the sign HOPITAL SAINT GERARD. Without a word, Marc got out of the car and came quickly to her side, but when he held open the door, Deanna made no move to get out.

“Can you walk?” There was terror in his eyes again. What if this were the beginning of a stroke? Then what would he do? She’d be paralyzed and he’d have to stay with her always. But that was madness, he wanted to stay with Deanna, didn’t he? His pulse raced as he helped her out of the car.

She was about to tell him again that she was all right. By now they both knew she was not. She took a deep breath and stood up with a tiny smile. She wanted to prove to him that she’d make it, that this was only nerves. For a moment, as they walked into the hospital, she felt better, and wondered why they had come. For a minute she even walked in her usual smooth, easy strides. Then, as she was about to boast of it to Marc-Edouard, an old man was rolled past them on a gurney. He was ancient and wrinkled, foul smelling, his mouth open, his face slack. She reached a hand out to Marc and passed out on the floor.

He gave a shout and collected her in his arms. Two nurses and a man in a white coat came running. In less than a minute they had her on a table in a small, antiseptic-smelling room, and she was awake again. She looked around for a moment, confused. Then she saw Marc, standing horrified in the corner.

“I’m sorry, but that man…”

“That’s enough.” Marc approached slowly, holding up one hand. “It wasn’t the old man, or the temperature in the church.” He stood next to her, very tall, very grim, and suddenly very old. “Let’s find out what it was-what it is. D’accord?” She didn’t answer as the doctor nodded to him, and he left.

He haunted the corridor, looking strangely out of place and glancing at the phone. Should he call her? Why shouldn’t he? What difference did it make? Who would see? But he didn’t feel like it now. His thoughts were with Deanna. She had been his wife for eighteen years. They had just lost their only child. And now, perhaps… He couldn’t bear the thought. He passed the phone once more, without even stopping this time.

It seemed hours before a young woman doctor came to find him.

And then he knew. And knew he could tell Deanna the truth. Or he could tell her a lie-a very small lie. He wondered if he owed it to her to tell her, to tell her that he knew-or if, instead, Deanna owed something to him.

22

Deanna sat up straight in her bed, looking paler than the whitewashed wall behind her head. “You’re wrong. It’s a lie!”

Marc was staring at her and wearing a very small smile. He was completely calm. “It most certainly is not. And six months from now, my darling, you’ll have a very hard time convincing anyone of that, I’m afraid.”

“But I can’t be.”

“And why not?” His eyes searched her face.

“I’m too old to be pregnant, for chrissake.”

“At thirty-seven? Don’t be absurd. You will probably be able to have a child anytime in the next fifteen years.”

“But I’m too old!” She was shrieking it at him and she looked near tears. Why had they not told her first, given her time to absorb the shock before she had to face Marc? But no, that was not the way of things here, in France, where the patient was always the last to know anything. And she could well imagine the scene Marc would have made: a determined man, an important man who must be informed of Madame’s condition first; he did not wish his wife to be upset, and they had just been through so much, such tragedy…

“Darling, please don’t be foolish,” Marc was saying. He stood up and walked to the side of the bed, where he gently rested his hand on her head, and ran it slowly down the long silky black hair. “You’re not too old at all. May I sit down?” he asked. She nodded, and he sat down on the edge of the bed.

“But… two months?” She looked at him with eyes filled with despair. She had wanted it to be Ben’s. She had thought of it too, for the first time just before she fell asleep. It had dawned on her, and she had argued with the thought, but as she drifted off to sleep she suddenly wondered-the dizziness, the nausea, the constant desire for sleep. All she had been able to think of was Ben. She didn’t want it to be Marc’s. She looked at him now in disappointment and pain. Two months pregnant meant it was Marc’s, not Ben’s.

“It must have happened that last night before I left. Un petit au revoir.”

“That is not funny.” Tears filled her eyes. She was far from pleased. Now he understood even more than she knew. But now he understood that there was not only another man, but someone she loved. It didn’t matter. She would forget him. She had something important to do in the next months. She owed Marc his son. “I don’t understand.”

“Darling, don’t be naive.”

“I haven’t gotten pregnant in years. Why now?”

“Sometimes that’s how those things happen. In any case it makes no difference. We’re getting a whole new chance-another family, a child.”

“We’ve already had a child.” She looked like a petulant little girl as she sat cross-legged in her hospital bed, wiping away tears with the palm of her hand. “I don’t want any more children.” At least not yours. Now she knew the truth too. If she had truly loved him, she would have wanted his baby. And she didn’t. She wanted Ben’s.

Marc was looking embarrassingly pleased and painfully patient. “It’s normal to feel that way at first. All women do. But when it comes… Remember Pilar?”

Deanna’s eyes flashed into his. “Yes, I remember Pilar. And the others. I’ve done that, Marc. I won’t do it again. For what? For more heartbreak, more pain? For you to not be there for another eighteen years? At my age, you expect me to bring up a child alone? And another half-breed, another half-American, all French? You want me to go through that again, competing with you for the allegiance of our child? Dammit, I won’t do it!”

“You most certainly will.” His voice was quiet and as solid as steel.

“I don’t have to!” She was shouting at him now. “This isn’t the Dark Ages! I can have an abortion if I want to!”

“No, you cannot!”

“The hell I can’t!”

“Deanna, I won’t discuss this with you. You’re upset.” She was lying in her bed now, crying into the pillow. “Upset” was barely adequate for what she felt. “You’ll get used to the idea. You’ll be pleased.”

“You mean I don’t have a choice, is that it?” She glared at him. “What’ll you do to me if I get rid of it? Divorce me?”

“Don’t talk nonsense.”

“Then don’t push me around.”

“I’m not pushing, I’m happy.” He looked at her with a smile and held out his arms, but there was something different in his eyes. She didn’t come to him. After a moment he took her hands and brought them one after the other to his lips. “I love you, Deanna. And I want our child. Our baby. Yours and mine.”

She closed her eyes and almost cringed as he said it. She had been there before. But he said nothing; he only stood up and took her in his arms, then stroked her hair briefly. Then he pulled away. She watched him leave, looking pensive and distracted.

Alone in the dark, she cried for a while, wondering what she should do. This changed everything. Why hadn’t she known? Why hadn’t she guessed? She should have figured it out before, but she’d only missed it once, and she