Promise Me This (51 page)

“Ah,” she whispered.
“Il est artiste.”

“And best of all—” Armand smiled slyly at his wife—“I know his name.”

“Non, c’est pas possible!”

Armand laughed. “You are correct, my love; it is not
possible
. It is
Michael
.”

“You are guessing.” Playfully she slapped his chest.

He shrugged his shoulders, still laughing.

“And how do you know this?”

“It is because of our harvest feast last week. Some of the staff and I spoke of the harvest feasts celebrated round the world, and Sister Bunnell mentioned the feast of Michaelmas and how her family always roasted golden a fine goose. The fellow’s head jerked up and he shouted—but wait; I will show you.” He pushed the window wider still and leaned out. “Say, there! What is your name, my son?”

The young man stood and turned. He tipped his imaginary hat to Dr. Narvett and bowed. “I am Michael.”

“And how do you know that, my boy?” Dr. Narvett called again.

“Because Mam named me for the archangel himself—the angel above all angels!”

“Your mam named you well, Michael!” Dr. Narvett pulled back, closed the window, and smiled at his beautiful, incredulous wife. “It is a beginning.”

“Oui.”
She nodded, new respect shining in her eyes.
“C’est un début.”

On 8 November, a nervous Matthias Erzberger, representing Germany, met with an all-but-cocky Marshal Ferdinand Foch, representing France, in a railway carriage deep in the forest of Compiègne.

Enemies at war, the two men and their delegations hammered out the details of an armistice, ending the Great War with the stroke of a pen. Cessation of hostilities was set for the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

Whole cities chanted the countdown. Across the globe, church bells pealed at eleven. Men, women, and children danced in the streets and byways, screaming, crying for joy, for an end to the terrible toil of war.

The populace of defeated countries lifted their hands and voices in the hope that armistice meant relief and peace of some sort; what sort, they could not afford to question. And when they had slept—victorious and defeated alike—they began the celebration again.

Annie refused Carol’s repeated invitations to join the villagers’ morning revelry, the town’s first public dancing and singing since the war began.

“I need to be alone, Carol—just quiet, for a time. Please understand.”

“Ah.” Carol nodded wisely. “You wish to be alone with your thoughts—with your love.” She smiled and tilted her head. “Soon Phillippe will return—by Christmas, I think.” She stroked Annie’s cheek. “And then you will dance.”

Annie pressed her friend’s arm. “Have a wonderful time, Carol.”

“Un moment.”
Carol raised her finger to her cheek in a sly smile, then crooked it, beckoning.
“Viens!”
She towed Annie through the corridor and up the stairs to her room. “I was saving this
pour Noël
!” she whispered. “But if today is not Christmas—the peace on earth—then when it will be, I do not know!

“Sit here, Elise!” Gently she pushed Annie to the seat at her dressing table. She rummaged secretively, half-laughing, through her wardrobe and finally lifted a brown paper package from the top shelf. She tore the paper away and pulled a bolt of creamy silk from its wrappings, hefted the bolt high into the air, and let the fabric flow across her bed, a perfect, rippling waterfall.

“Voilà!”
She laughed, delighted. “It is the last of the wedding silk from the DuBock silk mill—the finest in France! They closed when the war took the last son to fight, but Maud—the great matriarch of that family—is my dearest friend. We were children together!” She held the featherlight fabric to her shoulder to better display. “
Une telle beauté
, such lavish beauty,
n’est-ce pas
?”

“It is lovely,” Annie said, “truly lovely!”

“
C’est pour toi, ma petite
Elise.” Carol smiled softly and twirled Annie round to face the mirror. She draped the cloud of ivory perfection across Annie’s shoulders. “Do you not see? It is the perfect wedding gown! We will send for the best seamstress in Paris. Maud will know the one! I shall write her tomorrow!”

“It is too beautiful,” Annie whispered. “I can’t—”

“Nothing,
ma chère
, is too beautiful for the love of my son,” Carol whispered fiercely and whisked the fabric away before her own tears spoiled it.

Annie stood and hugged her friend, who laughed at herself and said, “This is not a day for crying. It is a day to sing!”

Together the women folded the faintly shimmering silk. Carol wrapped it lovingly in the brown paper and reverently handed it to Annie. “I will be away through the day and late into the night,
ma chère
,” she warned. “Such victory does not come to our village more than once in a lifetime.”

“I am well. I will be well.” Annie smiled and followed her friend to the hallway.

When the heavy door of the château closed behind Carol and the last servant had gone to join the revelry, Annie closed her eyes and breathed deeply. She listened and found in the silence the greatest peace of all.

Annie walked up the marbled stairs to her room. She sat before the long, low desk beneath her window, allowing the autumn late-morning sun to warm her face, to seep deep into her bones. She drew linen writing paper from the desk drawer and a pen from its holder. She cleaned the nib, then dipped the tip into the inkwell and paused, her pen in midair. She must think clearly and word carefully all that she would say. There were letters to write—long-overdue letters.

Annie’s letter from France was a double-edged sword in Maggie Allen McKenica’s heart. It brought joy and resolution but confirmed the worst of her fears.

Thank You, Lord in heaven, that Annie is safe. But why, Sweet Jesus? Why would You give me the joy of his life and let it be snatched away? Why not let me go to my grave barren rather than to have planted such joy in my heart as that lad brought? Was he not the son no other could have been to me? Is she not the daughter I have waited all my life to hold?

While the rest of Swainton and Cape May County celebrated the armistice, and the town and majority of middle-aged mothers rejoiced in the promise of their sons’ homecoming from the Great War, Maggie’s faith wrestled with her God who gave and her God who took away.

She pounded her fists and cried her tears behind the sheds in the gardens. She lay prostrate on Sean’s grave on moonless nights. She slept in Daniel’s arms.

By the end of two weeks she remembered that He was also the God who had sustained her through a young, arranged marriage, a trip on unknown seas to a new world, and a farm with a mortgage all their own. He was the God who had comforted her through years of barrenness and the death of her good husband Sean and then the death of Owen—the miracle lad who never came. He was the God who brought her instead Michael, the blessed son she had never borne. He was the God of her astonishing late-in-life marriage to Daniel, a man as good as any ten.

This God, she decided, who had held her when Michael came to live with them, was the same God who held her when Michael sailed away. He had comforted her when Annie hoped to come and when Annie disappeared and when the war dragged on. She had a long history with this God.

At the end of a very long month Maggie found her knees and vowed, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him.” She sat back on her heels and whispered, “What is next, Lord? Show me Your path and give me the strength, the grace, to walk in it. But do not leave me, Lord. Stay close, for I must lean hard.”

Maggie wrote Annie, repeating her offer of a home, if ever her dear niece wanted or needed it. And gripping her pen, Maggie wished Annie and Phillippe well in their forthcoming marriage, praying that would bring her joy.

Someday, when you are ready, dearest Annie, I hope that you and Phillippe will bring your children to visit Daniel and me. We shall walk together in Owen and Michael’s gardens and the very special one Michael named for you. The pink and white double roses will bloom there again come June, the English boxwood will grow in its own slow way, the ivy will trail and spread, and the blue lobelia will be waiting.

All my love,

Aunt Maggie

When Connie received Annie’s letter to her family, she wept. She wept for joy and relief that Annie was alive and safe. She wept for sadness that Michael was gone. She wept in fury that Annie had not let her or her parents know in nearly three years where she was or even that she was alive. And she wept for her parents’ sake, for the terrible toll Annie’s disappearance had taken on them, like the loss of a second late-in-life daughter. But she continued to read.

I do not expect any of you or Aunt Maggie to forgive me for the sorrow and anxiety my disappearance has surely caused you. Please believe me when I say that if I had been able to write, to let even one of you know of my existence or whereabouts, I would have done so— a thousand times.

One day I shall explain and hope you will believe I chose the only course I could, the only course Aunt Eleanor left to me. You were and are my family and were so very generous when I needed such kindness most, when I had nowhere to turn. I owe you everything.

I have missed you all terribly—words too feeble.

After the lorry accident, and after I learned of Michael’s death, I was sent to the home of Madame Carol Fondrey to convalesce. She has been most kind to me and has treated me as a daughter in every way.

Her son Phillippe, an officer in the French army, has made me an offer of marriage. I am considering his proposal. I realize that I must build my life somewhere, as all the world builds upon the ashes of this war. And I am grateful to them both. He wishes to marry in the spring; his mother is even now making plans.

If this should come to pass, I shall have no great need of the inheritance left me by Grandfather Hargrave and Owen. In any case, before I wed, I should like to ask, Mr. Sprague, that you sell Hargrave House—if it remains—and liquidate my assets as quickly as possible. I never wish to see it again.