His laugh rustled near my ear. “I should hope so. We’ll go out this afternoon, sweetheart, and do a little shopping for you. Find you something to wear.”
“A toothbrush might be nice.”
“And tonight I’ll take you to dinner. The finest table in Paris. Make you splendidly tipsy on champagne and Burgundy and, oh, perhaps a little Muscat with dessert. And then whatever you like. Dancing, theater. A boat along the river, all to ourselves. Paris is at your feet, darling. The world’s at your feet.” He bent his head and kissed my neck. “I’m at your feet.”
“The most important part.”
He laughed aloud. “Kate, don’t you see? We’re perfectly free now. We can do whatever you want, my love. Anything at all, anywhere. I’ll give you such a honeymoon. Just name the place.”
I leaned my head into the hollow beneath his chin and sighed. “I can’t think. Just somewhere we can be private. I’d like… let me see… a piano, so you can play for me in the evenings. I’ve missed that. And a beach, where we can lie together and watch the palm trees sway.”
We stood quietly for a moment, staring out the window.
“What is it?” I turned toward him and looked up to see his brow knit together in long worried lines. “Spit it out, Ashford.”
“Well,” he said carefully, “I expect we should find a doctor for you first. Make sure it’s all right.”
I lowered my head. “I should be okay in a few days, I guess. I was only seven weeks along. I’ll need… a new prescription, of course, and…”
“And the rest of it?” His hand began to drift against my back, long gentle strokes.
I couldn’t speak without sobbing, so I remained quiet for a moment longer, letting his warmth, his stroking hand, absorb the pain for me. “I loved it so much,” I said at last. “I don’t know what happened, if it was the grief of seeing you go, or just exhaustion, or if… if going back in time… killed it. But I loved it so much. It was all I had left of you. Your son, your daughter maybe. Now I’ll never know… And I never even thought… I never thought about babies before…”
“Don’t blame yourself. It’s my fault, if anything.”
I stood there against him for the longest time, trying to understand how the joy and the grief could coexist together in my heart. He went silent, stroking my back with his uncanny patience, not crowding me with words. Waiting for me to speak first.
“You’d make an amazing father.” I kept my voice even with some effort. “I wanted so much to give you that.”
He let my words hang there for a moment. “Perhaps,” he said, “when you’re ready, we might try again.”
I put my arms around his waist.
“Maybe not just yet,” I said, “but sometime.”
Epilogue
Somewhere in the Cook Islands
Halloween 2008
Though the sun burned overhead, the white sand felt cool and powdery beneath my legs, protected since daybreak by the lazy fronds of the palm tree against which I was leaning.
Julian’s head rested in my lap; his body lay stretched out perpendicular to mine, long and lean, his navy blue swimming trunks topped by a white linen shirt against the sun. No sling today; I’d let him take it off at last.
We were talking about his father. “I so wish I could have met him,” I said, looping Julian’s hair around my fingers, the sun-lightened strands like corn silk on my skin. “I mean, he obviously did a great job of raising you.”
“He’d have loved you,” Julian said, his eyes closed with contentment. “You’re exactly his sort of woman. Funny, opinionated, natural. He despised affectation.”
“What did he think of Miss Hamilton?”
Julian opened one eye. “Didn’t like her. It was one of the few things my parents fought about.”
“I think I like him even more.”
Julian closed the eye again. “I picture the two of you, sometimes. How proud I should be, presenting you as my bride. You two getting on famously.”
“Stop. You’ll make me cry.”
He reached up and found my hand and caressed my thumb, saying nothing. I gazed down adoringly at his face. A relaxed face now, its great burden of care finally removed. I hadn’t realized how much it had affected him, this fear for me, this certain knowledge that some crisis was coming that he might be powerless to avert. And now that I’d survived it, that he’d rescued me from the fate he’d always feared for me, his soul had taken on the peace of the fully redeemed. It had made for an epic honeymoon.
“Recite me something,” I said, after a while.
“What would you like to hear?”
“Something romantic. One of those old story poems.”
He smiled, and without opening his eyes, began “The Highwayman.” He was no fool. He knew that by the time he got to the second I’ll come to thee by moonlight, though Hell should bar the way, he stood pretty good odds of getting laid.
Today was no exception.
So it was only some time later, brushing the sand from my skin, he remarked, “You know, there’s one poem you’ve never asked for.”
“Which one’s that?” I turned over onto his chest, being careful to stay on his left side, and pressed little kisses into his sunlit flesh, into the neat pink scar to the right of his collarbone. “Mmm. You taste delicious. That coconut massage oil.”
“Mine.”
I looked up at his chin. “Julian, it’s a wonderful poem. But I really don’t need to hear about your insatiable longing for another woman’s beauty. Particularly Florence Hamilton’s.”
“What’s Flora got to do with it?”
“Well, she was the one who had it published. Obviously you sent it to her,” I said, trying to sound casual. “Unless there’s someone else I don’t know about.” I picked up his hand from the sand and began licking the fingertips with great concentration.
“Kate Ashford,” he burst out, struggling to rise, “do you mean to say that after all this time, you still think “Overseas” was an ode to Florence bloody Hamilton?”
I sat up and stared at him. “Wasn’t it?”
“Don’t you know when that poem was written?”
“Well, I just assumed…”
“Kate,” he said, “I scribbled “Overseas” into my notebook on the train, going up the line from Amiens, the morning after the most astonishing night of my life, having just fallen desperately and irrevocably in love. Haven’t you even listened to it? Her beauty, glowing through the rain… That was you, idiot love. Outside the cathedral.”
“Oh.”
“I did, after all,” he said, his voice gentling, “promise you rubbishy poetry. Even if Flora saw fit to snatch it for herself, when my kit was returned home.”
“So,” I said, “when I was sitting there in my AP Lit exam, writing that stupid essay, analyzing those lines…”
“You were writing about yourself, yes.”
I began to laugh. “Well, you might have told me, you know.” I grabbed his hands and put them around my naked waist and kissed him long and deep. “You adorable man. What am I going to do with you?”
“I daresay,” he murmured, returning the kiss, “if you simply continue on as you are, forever and ever, I should be very happy indeed.”
“Forever and ever? Never getting older? Never having, for example, birthdays?”
He dipped his head down and snorted into the skin of my shoulder. “As to that, darling… and, in passing, have I mentioned how much I adore this unspeakably alluring neck of yours?” He kissed around the base of it with tender little bites, taking his time. “But as I said, in the matter of birthdays, I’m shocked you have so little faith in me.”
“You did tell me, once, you needed reminding.”
“Not for the first one, I should hope.”
“Ohhh, I see. So that was my birthday present, this morning? I wondered.”
“Kate, my love,” he laughed, bearing me down in the sand with him, “you get that present all the time.”
“And always deeply appreciated.” I began kissing my way downward.
“Kate, you’re distracting me. I’m trying to work up to something here; I need my wits about me.”
I propped myself up. “Julian, seriously, I don’t need a present. I was only kidding, to see if you remembered. I mean, you’ve given me this entire magical honeymoon, to say nothing of buying up half the rue du Faubourg, waiting for your stitches to heal…”
“You enjoyed that, darling. Admit it.” He tweaked my nose affectionately.
I conceded. “Okay, a little. I sort of needed the clothes, after all. And it’s easier now. Knowing you’d met me before. That I was in your thoughts, all those years, while you were running Southfield. That I did help, in a way.”
“Help? For heaven’s sake, sweetheart, it wouldn’t have existed without you. So no more tedious rubbish about spending a little money now and again. You’re my properly legal wife now, thank God, and I take great pleasure in exercising my husbandly right to buy you whatever I jolly well please.”
I opened my mouth, but he placed his finger over it.
“That being said, darling, I’m not so thick I’d give you exactly what you didn’t want, just in order to please my own vanity. You’ll be happy to know I spent nothing at all on your birthday present. Not a single centime.” He beamed at me virtuously.
“Really?”
“Indeed. In fact, you might well say it’s something that already belongs to you.” He pulled himself upward and reached one long arm toward the picnic basket.
“What, a ham sandwich?” I inquired.
“Ye of little faith.” He flipped open the lid and fished inside. “It’s two things, really. The first is rather practical. I nicked it from the hotel manager in Paris.” He handed me a yellow legal pad and a pen.
“Very nice, Julian. I could use one of these.”
“Sweetheart. It’s for your business plan.”
“My business plan?”
“Mmm.” His arm curled around me. “You said something, in the middle of some argument or another, back in Manhattan, about how you couldn’t just go back to work anymore, because of me. The rather long shadow I’ve apparently cast. And I realized you’re quite right.”
“Julian, it’s not your fault. And it’s all so silly now, after what we’ve been through. Unimportant.”
“For now, perhaps. But once we’re back home, settled into our lives, you’ll want something more.” He paused for a single self-deprecating chuckle. “All those years, my darling, I thought it was enough I’d built a fortune to lay at your feet. I pictured selling off Southfield, being able to sweep my sweet Kate into a life of idle luxury. Rather proud of myself, I was. And then I found you at last, and it began to penetrate—through the swirling mists of adoration, you understand—that my beloved has rather a fierce streak of independence underneath her quiet exterior. That she wouldn’t quite be content as my—what was it?—arm candy?”
“That didn’t come through in those two days in France, when you claimed to have fallen in love with me?”
“Have a little pity, Kate. I was but a young pup then, overcome by your beauty, without a clue to the modern female mind. But I know you better now, darling. You want to accomplish things, your own things, and you won’t be happy without it.”
“But I don’t even know where to start.”
“I daresay you’ll think of something. Because I don’t want any more rubbish about dolls and gilded cages and bloody chauvinists…”
“I didn’t mean that, Julian. You know I didn’t.”
“Then let me prove it to you. You can do anything you want, sweetheart. Bookstore. Café. Start your own fund, if you like. Even a—what were your words?—a pansy philanthropic foundation, I believe. We’ve all the resources you need.”
“You’d seed me?”
A tender smile touched the edges of his mouth. “Darling, this fortune of ours—ours, Kate—isn’t meant to cage you, to limit you. It’s to set you free, sweetheart. Free to do whatever it is that makes you happy, that fulfills you.”
“And what about you?”
“What about me?” He shrugged. “I’ll be busy enough helping sort out that damned fiasco back home. Or else rescuing Hollander from his latest folly, God rot him. I shall simply cheer you on from the sidelines.”
“Oh, really?” I reached out with one toe and poked his leg. “And how long is that going to last, do you think? I know you, Julian, and you won’t be able to help yourself.” I bent closer. “And you know what? That’s fine. I can’t do it without you, you know. I’ll be counting on your help. Your advice.”
“Be careful, darling. Invite me in, and I might try to manage everything for you. Interfere remorselessly. Protect you from every vicissitude.”
“Oh, I’m learning how to deal with you. Keep you at bay with a few well-timed shrewish remarks.” I looked back down at the yellow pad. Blank. An open promise. Whatever I’d been expecting, it hadn’t been this. “Thank you. I’m overwhelmed. This is… this is the most amazing gift. And a little misleading, you know.” I looked back up. “It’s going to be pretty expensive, in the end.”
“Oh, you’ll make us a handsome profit on it, I’ve no doubt.” He rubbed my chin with his thumb and smiled broadly. “And now for your second gift, which is rather more in the sentimental line.”
“Am I going to cry?” I set the legal pad down in the sand.
“I should jolly well hope so.” He reached back in the basket. “Ah! Here you are. Only twelve and a half years late. Beastly old postal service.”
I stared down at the envelope in my hands. “What’s this?”
“You’re supposed to open it, darling. I daresay it will all become clear.”
I turned it over. It was addressed, in a lopsided black scrawl, to Mrs. Katherine Ashford, 29 rue des Augustins, Amiens. I turned my eyes back to Julian’s face. “Oh God. How did you… ?”
“I kept it in the pocket of my tunic, darling. I meant to post it once I returned to the trenches. In my ever-damned arrogance.”
It wasn’t sealed. I lifted the flap with shaking fingers and drew out the folded paper inside. It felt crisp and new, only a single sharp crease across the middle. “Didn’t you ever open it?” I said.
“No. I always thought I’d wait for you to do that. Ah, there it is.” He reached over to collect me. “What a weepy female you’ve become.”
“Sorry,” I whispered. I unfolded the letter; a smaller sheet slipped out, the left side slightly ragged.
“I made a clean copy for you, from the notebook. Ironically enough,” he drawled, “my everlasting fame, as you put it, comes from a mere first draft.”
I held up the paper. “Overseas,” he’d scrawled at the top, and the fourteen lines followed, spare and evocative, the ending now devastatingly clear: “… in this shadowed hour/The vision guards my faith, while overseas/Her heart beats mine, defeats eternity.”
“Your poem,” he said.
I nodded. There was no point in trying to say anything. I turned back to the enclosed letter.
He cleared his throat. “It’s not long. I was in a hurry.”
I read it through twice, and then the poem. I put the one sheet back in the other and folded it up again and slipped it back in the envelope.
“Was that all right?” he asked.
I nodded and turned and let him ease us down into the sand.
“Happy birthday.”
“A year ago,” I said, a long silent moment later, “I didn’t even know you. Didn’t even know this much love existed in the world. Isn’t that funny?” I spread my fingers out on his chest, watched the slow rise and fall of his breath. “Charlie and a couple of the other analysts took me out for my birthday. My twenty-fifth. Kind of a big deal. We went to this Tex-Mex bar in Tribeca and did tequila shots.”
Julian snorted.
“I did not do that many,” I said defensively. “I’m not much of a partier. But I was kind of hung
over the next day.”
“Poor darling.”
“Anyway, that was my last birthday. Now here I am.”
“Here you are. No tequila shots, I’m afraid.”
“No. Thank God. Just you.” I turned over in his arms and lifted myself, so I could stroke his cheeks with my hands. “Thank you. Darling Julian. The most wonderful birthday presents in the world. Both of them.” I lowered my head and kissed him.
“Mmm. You’re quite welcome.”
“You know, you’re very good at all this. At love. At marriage. The whole husband thing.”
He grinned. “It’s my life’s work, after all.”
I kissed the tip of his chin. “When we get back, I’m going to take such good care of you.”
“You already do.”
“I’ll get up early and make you pancakes.” I kissed a trail down the underside of his chin to the hollow of his throat.
“Oh, ha bloody ha. I’ll believe that when I see it. Ow!”
I’d just pinched his side.
“Maybe just on Sundays.” I followed with a tickle. “And bubble baths.”
“Bubble baths? Oh… for God’s… sake,” he managed, between gasps of laughter.
“Back rubs. With that yummy coconut oil.”
“That’s… more… like it. Kate, stop it… little minx…” He writhed helplessly.
I coiled my body and leaned into his ear. “Beat you to the water.”
I took off running, a dead sprint, powder flying from my feet. Ahead, beyond a hundred sloping yards of clean pale sand, the lagoon glowed aquamarine under a white sun.
He timed it all perfectly, as he always did, snaking his left arm around my waist and hauling me down with him just as the wavelets hit my thighs. The crystal water splintered above us; his sunlit body wrapped around mine; our wet laughing heads bobbed up together.
Tempting the gods.
Acknowledgments
So many people—knowingly and unknowingly—contributed to the publication of Overseas, it hardly seems fair that I only have space to single out a few.
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