We sat in silence for a long moment. Then, shivering despite the heat, I paid the bill. Zoë did not say a word. She seemed stunned.

I got up, weariness hindering every move. What now? Where to go? Back to Paris? Back to Charla’s?

I trudged on, my feet as heavy as lead. I could hear Zoë’s voice calling out to me, but I did not want to turn around. I wanted to get back to the hotel, fast. To think. To get going. To call my sister. And Edouard. And Gaspard.

Zoë’s voice was loud now, anxious. What did she want? Why was she whining? I noticed passersby staring at me. I swiveled around to my daughter, exasperated, telling her to hurry up.

She rushed to my side, grabbed my hand. Her face was pale.

“Mom…,” she whispered, her voice strained thin.

“What? What is it?” I snapped.

She pointed at my legs. She started to whimper, like a puppy.

I glanced down. My white skirt was soaked with blood. I looked back to my seat, imprinted with a crimson half moon. Thick red rivulets trickled down my thighs.

“Are you hurt, Mom?” choked Zoë.

I clutched my stomach.

“The baby,” I said, aghast.

Zoë stared at me.

“The baby?” she screamed, her fingers biting into my arm. “Mom, what baby? What are you talking about?”

Her pointed face loomed away from me. My legs buckled. I landed chin first on the hot, dry path.

Then silence. And darkness.

I OPENED MY EYES to Zoë’s face, a few inches from mine. I could smell the unmistakable scent of a hospital around me. A small, green room. An IV in my forearm. A woman wearing a white blouse scribbling something on a chart.

“Mom…,” whispered Zoë, squeezing my hand. “Mom, everything is OK. Don’t worry.”

The young woman came to my side, smiled and patted Zoë’s head.

“You will be all right, Signora,” she said, in surprisingly good English. “You lost blood, a lot, but you are fine now.”

My voice came out like a groan.

“And the baby?”

“The baby is fine. We did a scan. There was problem with placenta. You need to rest now. No getting up for a while.”

She left the room, closing the door quietly behind her.

“You scared the shit out of me,” said Zoë. “And I can say ‘shit’ today. I don’t think you’ll scold me.”

I pulled her close, hugging her as hard as I could despite the IV.

“Mom, why didn’t you tell me about the baby?”

“I was going to, sweetie.”

She looked up at me.

“Is the baby why you and Papa are having problems?”

“Yes.”

“You want the baby and Papa doesn’t, right?”

“Something like that.”

She stroked my hand gently.

“Papa is on his way.”

“Oh, God,” I said.

Bertrand here. Bertrand in the aftermath of all this.

“I phoned him,” said Zoë. “He’ll be here in a couple of hours.”

Tears welled up in my eyes, slowly trickled down my cheeks.

“Mom, don’t cry,” pleaded Zoë, frantically wiping my face with her hands. “It’s OK, everything is OK now.”

I smiled wearily, nodding my head to reassure her. But my world felt hollow, empty. I kept thinking of William Rainsferd walking away. “I don’t want to see you again. I don’t want to talk about this again. Please don’t call me.” His shoulders, rounded, stooped. The tightness of his mouth.

The days, weeks, months to come stretched ahead, bleak and gray. Never had I felt so despondent, so lost. The core of me had been nibbled away. What was left for me? A baby my soon to be ex-husband did not want and that I’d have to raise on my own. A daughter who would shortly become a teenager, and who might no longer remain the marvelous little girl she was now. What was there to look forward to, all of a sudden?

Bertrand arrived, calm, efficient, tender. I put myself in his hands, listened to him talking to the doctor, watching him reassure Zoë with an occasional, warm glance. He took care of all the details. I was to stay here till the bleeding stopped completely. Then I was to fly back to Paris and take it easy until fall, till my fifth month. Bertrand did not mention Sarah once. He did not ask a single question. I retreated into a comfortable silence. I did not want to talk about Sarah.

I began to feel like a little old lady, shipped here and there, like Mamé was shipped here and there, within the familiar boundaries of her “home,” receiving the same placid smiles, the same stale benevolence. It was easy, letting someone else control your life. I had nothing much to fight for, anyway. Except this child.

The child that Bertrand did not once mention either.

WHEN WE LANDED IN Paris a few weeks later, it felt like an entire year had gone by. I still felt tired and sad. I thought of William Rainsferd every day. Several times, I reached out for the phone, or pen and paper, meaning to talk to him, to write, to explain, to say something, to say sorry, but I never dared.

I let the days slip by, the summer move into fall. I lay on my bed and read, wrote my articles on my laptop, spoke to Joshua, Bamber, Alessandra, to my family and friends on the telephone. I worked from my bedroom. It had all seemed complicated at first, but it had worked out. My friends Isabelle, Holly, and Susannah took turns coming and making me lunch. Once a week, one of my sisters-in-law would go to the nearby Inno or Franprix for groceries with Zoë. Plump, sensual Cécile would make fluffy crêpes oozing with butter, and aesthetic, angular Laure would create exotic low-calorie salads that were surprisingly savory. My mother-in-law came less often but sent her cleaning lady, the dynamic and odorous Madame Leclère, who vacuumed with such terrifying energy it gave me contractions. My parents came to stay for a week in their favorite little hotel on the rue Delambre, ecstatic at the idea of becoming grandparents again.

Edouard came to visit every Friday, with a bouquet of pink roses. He would sit in the armchair next to the bed, and again and again, he would ask me to describe the conversation that took place between William and me in Lucca. He would shake his head and sigh. He said, over and over, that he should have anticipated William’s reaction, how was it that neither himself, nor I, could possibly have imagined that William never knew, that Sarah had never breathed a word?

“Can we not call him?” he would say, his eyes hopeful. “Can I not telephone him and explain?” Then he would look at me and mumble, “No, of course, I can’t do that, how stupid of me. How ridiculous of me.”

I asked my doctor if I could host a small gathering, lying down on my living-room sofa. She accepted and made me promise not to carry anything heavy and to remain horizontal, à la Récamier. One evening in late summer, Gaspard and Nicolas Dufaure came to meet Edouard. Nathalie Dufaure was there as well. And I had invited Guillaume. It was a moving, magical moment. Three elderly men who had an unforgettable little girl in common. I watched them pore over the old photos of Sarah, the letters. Gaspard and Nicolas asked us about William, Nathalie listened, helping Zoë pass around drinks and food.

Nicolas, a slightly younger version of Gaspard, with the same round face and wispy white hair, spoke of his particular relationship with Sarah, how he used to tease her because her silence pained him so, and how any reaction, albeit a shrug, an insult, or a kick, was a triumph because she had for one instant emerged from her secrecy, her isolation. He told us about the first time she had bathed in the sea, at Trouville, in the beginning of the fifties. She had stared out at the ocean in absolute wonder, and then she had stretched out her arms, whooped with delight, and rushed to the water on her nimble, skinny legs, and dashed into the cool, blue waves with screeches of joy. And they had followed her, hollering just as loud, entranced by a new Sarah they had never seen.