Miracle

by Deborah Smith

  Amy. He needed her tonight, more than ever. His anxiety and frustration over her decision to continue her pregnancy had never made him love her any less, even though he still resented the hopeless clump of cells growing inside her. She was almost eight months along now. Whether she was uncomfortable in his presence or not, he had to be with her in the last two weeks of the pregnancy. No matter what kind of arrangements he had to make here, he would be with her at the end.

  At the beginning, he corrected bitterly. The beginning of the real torture. How he loved that woman … and how terrified he was for her. He flailed himself imagining the delivery. God help him, he knew it was foolish to recall how her mother had died, but he couldn’t stop thinking about it. And when he did, his dislike for the obstinate accident living inside her turned to black hatred. But then he felt sick for despising their child.

  She could bear the same kind of pitiful, deformed thing that Marie had borne, a baby that would break Amy’s heart and convince even her that he wasn’t meant to be a father, and that nothing in his upbringing had prepared him to be a good one.

  He rubbed a trembling hand over his forehead and looked down at his own father, who had seen him only as a substitute for Antoine, the first son, the one who had been groomed to take charge, who was eager to learn empire building and business maneuvers. The rest of the family, including their mother, had been unimportant to Philippe de Savin. “You came,” his father repeated.

  “I’m here, yes,” Sebastien said to him, feeling empty and confused.

  His father struggled for enough air to speak. “I told the doctors long ago—no extraordinary measures. Will you make certain?”

  “Yes.” Sebastien leaned over him, where they could look at each other more easily. “Annette will be here soon. Her private nurse is bringing her.”

  “Good. I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to talk, if I waited much longer.” For a moment his father gasped for breath. His eyes burned into Sebastien’s. “I have something to tell her.”

  A few minutes later the nurse arrived with Annette, who was seated in a wheelchair. She guided the chair close to the bed. Annette looked at her father with stark grief and grasped one of his limp hands. “This is just another of your bad nights, Papa. Don’t be morbid. You’ll be better in the morning.”

  “No. This is different. I can feel it.” Pleasure, hard and proud, glittered in his eyes. “I still … control my own

  Annette moaned softly. “I love you, papa.”

  “I know.”

  Sebastien looked away, old anger renewing itself. I know. Annette, at least, deserved better than that.

  “Sebastien.” His father’s voice drew him back. He looked into the pale blue eyes, which searched his for a moment than shifted to Annette. “I have already told Sebastien, and now I tell you. I want you to take over the businesses. Sebastien has agreed to relinquish his claims to you.”

  Annette clutched his hand and said tearfully. “Oh, Papa!”

  “I do this because you deserve them more than he. He knows this, too. You have earned them. He will only wait until I’m dead and go back to his career as a surgeon. What would become of all I’ve worked for, then? From what I’ve heard in the past few months, he doesn’t have half your talent for business.”

  She bowed her head against his side and cried. He turned his gaze to Sebastien. Sebastien stood rigid for a moment, fighting for control, knowing that even now his father expected it. A truce, an apology, respect—his father had given all three to him. He had given Annette’s affection back to him, as well, because now she would forget her jealousy.

  “My decision is final. I demand your cooperation, Sebastien,” his father ordered, staring at him, tears threatening his eyes. Tears.

  Sebastien smoothed a hand over his father’s hair. Gratitude and victory closed his throat so tightly that he had to whisper to get the words past them. “I will honor your wishes.”

  “For once,” his father said, his voice raspy with disdain. But there was no anger in the covert look he gave Sebastien. He knew that secrets were what they shared best.

  “Amy called while you were at the office,” Annette told him. Their father’s funeral was only a few hours away. Sebastien dropped his briefcase on a table in the entrance hall and shoved both hands into the pockets of his overcoat. He looked up at Annette, who was propped with the aid of her crutches against the balustrade at the landing above the massive staircase. Her dressing gown floated around her, giving her an even more queenly air than usual. She was pale with grief, but her eyes had a teasing glint.

  “You were polite to her, I hope.”

  “Yes. Actually, I like her, Sebastien. She seems very sensible. And it’s obvious that she adores you. Nothing sensible about that, I suppose, but those of us who adore you must stick together. There are so few of us.”

  “An elite group.”

  “No need to call her back until … afterward. She simply wanted to check up on you. She has a notion that underneath that stern exterior beats a vulnerable heart. I told her that I think she may be right.”

  “Obviously, you two didn’t discuss anything remotely practical.”

  “She spoke with Jacques and Louise and made them feel a little better. They were clamoring to talk with her. They became very fond of her when she was here, you know, and she has a lovely camaraderie with children. She told them that their Uncle Sebastien loved Grandfather de Savin and was sorry that he died. And that they could turn to you for help today. Jacques reported this to me with disbelief, afterward. Whatever are you going to do with this charming, misguided woman who’s convinced that you’ll be an affectionate father to the child you’ve given her?”

  “Let’s bury one bad father before we mourn another, please.” Feeling that his past had come full circle today and was about to confront him, he went to a liquor cabinet and poured himself a stiff drink. Here’s to you, Papa. Goddamn your soul.

  He had hoped that his father’s funeral would be easy to endure, a farewell to bitterness, an open door through which he could see the rest of his own life with new clarity, even if his and Amy’s child was everything he feared it would be.

  But his gloom deepened at the graveside. He despised the way such things were designed to provoke the most morbid thoughts. The crowd was enormous, elite, powerful, all dressed in black, all faithfully respectful but discreetly bored. The bleak, ancient cemetery was filled with the hulking statuary of medieval angels who seemed to hover and threaten, their stone faces streaked as if melting like the slate palate of the January sky above them. The rain held off, but a chilling mist crept over the cemetery and into Sebastien’s blood.

  He scanned the dozens of people who crowded closest around the low granite vault carved with de Savin in scrolling letters. Only Annette, seated next to him in her wheelchair, was crying. It struck him like the classic scene from Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. Scrooge watching his own funeral, where hardly anyone mourns him at the end of his cold, lonely life. As will be the case with me. Sebastien shivered inside a black cashmere overcoat. Don’t be absurd and maudlin.

  But his mouth went dry. Would he drive Amy and their child away? Assuming foolishly, he reminded himself, that he and Amy could have a healthy child who lived. As the priest droned on beside the vault Sebastien fought nausea. His distracted gaze fell on Jacques and Louise, standing beside their mother. Recognition tore into him. Their young faces held the same kind of horror that he felt, the same fear of the unknown, but also, on Jacques’s six-year-old countenance, the most terrible grief.

  He had loved his grandfather, Sebastien realized, amazed.

  When the priest finished, a crowd began to cluster around Annette. Sebastien, his heart racing, kissed her tear-stained cheek and said, “I’ll take the children home. Don’t hurry. Talk with your friends, if you’d like.”

  “You want to take the children? Are you sure?” She stared at him in surprise. Over the months his avoidance of them had become an unswerving routi
ne.

  “Don’t look at me as if I might be planning to sell them to trolls, Annette. I’m only offering to escort them home.”

  “Well … oh, go ahead. Stranger things have happened. Thank you.”

  “I don’t want to go with Uncle Sebastien,” Jacques said. He was dressed in long pants for the first time. His black suit and tailored overcoat gave him a maturity that made his swollen, grief-ravaged little face affecting in its attempts at anger and control. Beneath the blond hair his large dark eyes glared at Sebastien. He has de Savin blood. He will learn to hide his emotions soon enough, Sebastien thought wearily. Louise huddled close to her brother.

  “Come with me, both of you,” Sebastien ordered, then held out his hand. At four years old it was even difficult for Louise to comprehend that people died, much less that this morbid ceremony was just something to be endured and forgotten as quickly as possible. She eyed Sebastien under tangles of blond curls, then wound one hand into the black wool cape over her dress and stuck the other up to be swallowed by his. From her wide-eyed inspection of his large sinewy hand, it was obvious that she expected it to crush her fingers at any second. “Amy told us to love you today,” she noted. “We promised.”

  “I don’t want to go with him,” Jacques repeated to his mother.

  Annette glanced at the people around her, who included many of her business associates. She didn’t want a scene, Sebastian knew. No tantrums. She drew herself up tightly in the wheelchair. “Go with Uncle Sebastien. Not another word.”

  Jacques was too well-disciplined to do more than clamp his mouth shut and look at Sebastien in silent dislike. Sebastien nodded to him. “Come.”

  When the three of them were insulated in the plush backseat of one of the limousines that lined the cemetery streets, Sebastien let go of Louise’s hand and reached over her to touch the intercom button. Louise sat on one side of him, and Jacques on the other. As he told the driver to take a long route home he noticed her dark curious eyes—his mother’s eyes—watching him with increasing bravado. But Jacques stared at the limousine’s carpeted floorboard, his demeanor polite but resentful.

  After the car began moving Sebastien settled back and looked at him. Sensing the scrutiny, Jacques turned his gaze up to Sebastien’s. “You didn’t love grandfather. You don’t love us, either. Well, we don’t love you.”

  Sebastien had wanted to say something comforting, but the boy’s words made him feel foolish and ugly. “I don’t expect you to love me,” he told Jacques. “But you should show me respect.” Spoken just as my father would have said it. Sebastien grimaced.

  Louise tugged at the sleeve of his overcoat. He turned warily to look at her. Her delicate face was contorted with anger. Her mouth trembled and tears gathered in her eyes. “Why don’t you love us? We haven’t done anything bad.”

  He opened his mouth, shut it, and frowned at her. “I—I do love you.”

  “You do?”

  “No,” Jacques interjected sharply. “You think we’re too much trouble.” His chin came up. “If my papa were here I wouldn’t even have to talk to you.”

  “Our papa went away in a plane crash,” Louise explained, as if Sebastien might not remember.

  Jacques added loudly, “And I wouldn’t have to talk to you if Grandfather de Savin was still—”

  “He’s dead.” Sebastien didn’t soften his tone; he wanted a brutal effect. “He’s never coming back. And neither is your father. Wishing and making childish threats won’t change the truth.” How well I remember.

  Jacques’s shoulders sagged. He twisted away and pressed his forehead to the limousine’s window. Louise began to cry with little mewling sounds. Sebastien felt remorse pulling up harsh, vivid memories. He had been like Jacques and Louise thirty years ago, so easily hurt, but for him there hadn’t been anyone who might understand, no one who could be trusted with the bitter reasons for his grief and fury.

  And now he was sentencing Jacques and Lousie to suffer as he had.

  Louise’s crying broke off with a startled gulp as Sebastien lifted her into his lap and wrapped an arm around her. He snaked the other arm around Jacques’s shoulders.

  The boy pivoted in the seat and gaped at him. Sebastien pulled him close to his side. He was stunned at his own actions, but remorse was tearing him apart inside, and he was overwhelmed with so many conflicting emotions that logic couldn’t take command. He expected Jacques to shove him away. But the boy, though obviously shocked, sat still.

  “I do love you, both of you,” Sebastien repeated gruffly, the words rushing from him as he looked from Jacques to Louise. “And I know how hard it is to understand what happened to your papa, and to Grandfather de Savin. It’s hard for me to understand, too.”

  “No, you used to be a doctor,” Jacques answered. “You’ve seen a lot of dead people. That’s why you don’t cry. Maman said so.”

  “I’m still a doctor. And doctors cry, just as everyone else does.”

  “Not you. Not for Grandfather de Savin.”

  “That doesn’t mean that I don’t love him.” Amazed that he had said those words aloud, he watched Jacques’s eyes scrutinize his face for the truth.

  Sebastien’s troubled thoughts were distracted by Louise, who curled herself around him and planted her face in his line of vision. Shyly she whispered, “I’d cry if you died, Uncle Sebastien.”

  Only a heart of stone could resist such a wistful appeal. He stared at her, his chest filling with wonder. What a maudlin fool I could become, if I had children such as these.

  “I wouldn’t cry,” Jacques announced. He nudged his sister aside and looked up into Sebastien’s eyes. “What did we ever do to make you so mad at us?”

  “I have never been mad at either of you. You haven’t done anything wrong.”

  “Then why don’t you like us?”

  “I like you very much, but, you see, adults and children don’t have a great deal to talk about with each other.”

  “We talked to Grandfather all the time. He told stories about the war.”

  “Did he ever tell you about your grandmother de Savin? Or about your uncle Antoine and your aunt Bridgette?”

  “No.”

  “Who are Antoine and Bridgette?” Louise asked.

  “Our uncle and aunt. Like Uncle Jacques,” Jacques told her. “Maman’s brothers and sister. Maman said they died a long time ago. Uncle Jacques’s the one I’m named for.”

  “Oh.” Louise looked dubious. Her questioning eyes rose to Sebastien’s. She was obviously confused. “You are Maman’s brother too?”

  “That’s right. Your Maman and I had a sister,” he explained patiently. “Bridgette. And two brothers. Antoine and Jacques.”

  “Jacques is my brother,” she countered.

  Her brother snorted. “He and I have the same name, you dumb turtle!”

  “Enough,” Sebastien interjected, feeling strangely lightheaded and hopeful. “Would you like to hear about them? And about your grandmother de Savin? She came from a place filled with legends and fairy tales.”

  “Where?” Louise demanded.

  Sebastien took a deep breath and began to tell them about Brittany and a fanciful fisherman’s daughter who fell in love with a gallant young soldier on holiday. They listened without blinking, hypnotized.

  He finally knew what he could share with them, and it was a gift that no one else could give.

  He woke to find Annette bending over him, smiling with tears on her face, her arms braced on her crutches. After a bleary moment he remembered where he was—sitting upright with his back against the headboard of Jacques’s bed—and with whom. Louise was asleep in his lap, slumped sideways with her head on his chest. Jacques lay beside him, one arm flung across Sebastien’s legs, his face pillowed on the folds of Sebastien’s overcoat, which Sebastien had never gotten around to removing.

  “What magical thing has happened to you?” Annette whispered, studying the three of them.

  He shook his head, not certain
yet, feeling awkward but also pleased. “We have more in common than I thought.”

  “Go back to America. Immediately.”

  “What?”

  “Hurry before you forget this moment. Tell Amy about it. Tell her that you are a better candidate for fatherhood than you ever suspected.”

  “You read too much into a simple—”

  “Go. I want you on a plane tomorrow. I can take care of everything here by myself, now. You’ve done more than your share. Now go and live your own life, and don’t disappoint that amazing American woman who understands you better than any of the rest of us do, and who sees a great deal worth waiting for.”

  Freedom. He relished it like a fine wine that had been aging just for this moment. He didn’t know if Amy would welcome him, neither did he know how he could hide his fear when he saw her eight months pregnant. But looking down at the children who had won him over and been won in return—all because of Amy’s patient coaching—he had hope for himself.

  Amy sat on the living-room couch with a bland white lamp on the rented end table making a pool of light on the script she held. She shivered inside her pink tent of a nightgown, tried to pull her feet under her, then gave up when her stomach made the effort too great.

  Again she tried to study the script. Again her thoughts fled to Sebastien at the funeral. She looked at the phone on the end table, wishing that he would call.

  When the phone rang she grabbed for it, groaning under her breath because her stomach got in the way of even the simplest task. “Hello.”

  “I’m still shopping,” Frau Diebler announced. “There is a sale on shoes at Neiman-Marcus. I’ll be back in an hour. Did you drink your milk?”

  “A quart of it. And all I’ve been doing since you left is sitting on the couch like a huge potato. I’m resting, I promise. Whales don’t rest this well when they beach themselves.”