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“Edouard’s been sent away,” I whisper.
Henri’s eyes narrow at this. I’m on dangerous ground with him but too upset to care. “Sent away where?”
“They wouldn’t tell him,” I reply, staring at the words on the paper as tears fall freely. “He says a priest from Reims arrived this morning and told him to pack his things. He’s going to see the monsignor in Paris.”
“Why would he write you personally about this?” Henri demands. “Because Edouard must have done something wrong to be sent away like that, and it seems very suspect that he found time to write you, of all people.”
Distress and outrage make my temper flare. “You’re living in sin! How dare you judge anything he does?”
“I’m not a priest!” he yells. “And your overreaction right now leads me to think he wasn’t acting like much of a priest himself.”
“He loves me,” I insist, though already a small voice in the back of my head is now questioning that. Is questioning everything. “He asked the church to replace him here so we could be together. There’s no shame in it.”
Henri has never looked more disappointed in me. “God, Marie,” he says softly. “He’s a grown man. He didn’t need to ask anyone’s permission to be with you if that’s what he wanted. Did he...take liberties?”
Tears stream down my face. “You just don’t understand! I knew you wouldn’t!”
“Answer the question,” he demands. “Did he, or did he not, take liberties?”
I’d have to be crazy to tell him the truth, given how angry he is. “No,” I reply, and then I run to the comfort of my room and bed, slamming the door behind me.
No matter how much I want to deny what Henri said, I know it must be true. Edouard didn’t have to seek permission to be with me. And if he loved me a fraction of the way I do him, he’d never have left me the way he has.
* * *
The next days are grueling. There is no word from Edouard. I continue to go to the church, to keep up appearances while hoping for a hint of what’s happened to him, but people will barely speak to me. No one will eat the food I bring. My language classes now only have one or two attendees at most. Irene glares at me when I enter each day with such animosity it’s almost painful. Father Etienne, who’s replaced Edouard, coolly tells me a few nights later that my assistance is no longer needed with the parish supper, and that my time would be better spent in prayer.
Amelie has to go home for a few weeks, and it’s a relief to have an excuse to stay home and avoid town altogether. But Henri, anxiously awaiting her return and worried about the war, is short-tempered and unbearable, which leaves me feeling as if I have no one at all. Sadness exhausts me. I fall asleep on the couch whenever there’s a free moment, and I’m too nauseous to eat.
I begin to wonder if I will ever recover from Edouard’s departure. I’d expected to be heartsick, but I didn’t expect to feel as if I’d die in the process.
And then one morning I wake and that ever-present nausea has come to a head. I rush for the bathroom, and even as I’m running, it all comes to me in a terrible moment of realization: these are not symptoms of a broken heart, and I did not have my cycle this month.
I stagger to the floor beside the toilet. I’m pregnant. Edouard and I were careless, swept away by how all-consuming it was and how momentous it seemed. It was as if we thought the fact that he is a priest would offer some kind of protection of its own. And it’s something I can’t tell anyone, Henri least of all. God knows what he’d do if he found out.
* * *
I manage to keep my secret. Henri is called to the front, which sends the whole house into chaos. I resolve to wait until Henri is gone to tell Amelie I’m pregnant. He’ll be livid when he learns, but it’s the only way. In all likelihood, the child will be born by the time he finds us in England.
Nonetheless, it’s hard to see Henri go. If anyone can survive this war it’s my brother, but Amelie and I spend the day following his departure on the cusp of tears. And as I watch her that night, her first as a single mother, I can no longer hold mine in.
“Please don’t cry,” she rasps, her voice beginning to wobble. “I’m keeping myself together right now, but barely.”
Suddenly, I can’t keep the secret to myself a moment longer.
“I’m pregnant,” I whisper.
The spoon in Amelie’s hand clatters to the floor.
“I didn’t want Henri to know,” I continue. “He’d blame Edouard.”
She’s always been so sympathetic toward Edouard and my feelings for him, but I see none of that sympathy now. “How could he have slept with you and then just left?”
“It wasn’t his fault,” I reply. “He tried to stop it and I wouldn’t let him.”
Her mouth is tight. “There’s no possible way he doesn’t bear some responsibility.”
“He asked the church to relieve him of his duties and find him another position. They said no. All his training is in theology and he’s not qualified to do anything else. He’s been looking for teaching positions, but with the war, no one is hiring, and he won’t marry me until he can support me. He thought I would be safer in England with you until he found something.”
