Spring House

by Taylor, Mary Ellen

  It was not long before the doctor told her to push, and Rick and Helen were gripping her hands and whispering words of encouragement.

  “You’re doing great, Meg,” Rick said. Until now, the only one who had called her Meg was Scott.

  “You’re so brave,” Helen said.

  “Now do this!” Rick sounded like a marine captain who belonged on a battlefield and not in the delivery room dressed in scrubs that read DAD on the back.

  Sweat dampened her forehead as the pressure built. She thought about Scott and all the hard words they had shared the last time they had seen each other. God, I’m so sorry, Scott. I really wish you could see this.

  When the final push came, even the guilt was shoved aside as her entire focus centered on the baby.

  Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.

  She gritted her teeth, holding Rick’s hand tight, and when the doctor told her one more push, she put all her energy into the push. She felt the baby slide from her.

  The doctor grabbed the baby and suctioned her mouth out. Suddenly, Megan was not focused on discomfort or the future or any project. All her thoughts shifted to the tiny, wrinkled, pink creature in the doctor’s arms who was too silent.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Diane

  Age 28

  Saturday, September 6, 1919

  Normandy, France

  Diane and Gilbert’s daughter was born in the château in the middle of one of the worst storms to hit the region in generations. The wind outside roared over the roof, tearing tiles as it swept past and banging the shutters against the stone house. The apples were ripe, ready for the picking, vulnerable and exposed to the elements. And they were both helpless to do anything.

  Though no bombs had dropped on their land, there had been few men to help Diane with the harvests during the war. For four years, she’d spent endless hours alone, picking and hauling apples in the hopes of saving their livelihood. Occasionally, some of the very old and young came from the village to help her, but in the end, many of the apples had simply fallen to the ground and rotted.

  It had been raining the afternoon Gilbert had returned to her after the Great War. The trees were heavy with unpicked, rotting fruit and nearly choked by tall weeds. The war had nearly destroyed the orchard and Gilbert, who was frightfully thin and wearier than she had ever seen him. She wept as he walked up their long driveway, and she ran toward him. When she embraced him, she hugged him with all her earthly strength. The rains soaking them both to the skin, they had stood in that spot, unable to move for the longest time.

  That night Gilbert’s eyes had been for only her, and they had made love with desperation that stretched the bounds of passion. They both had a frantic need to reaffirm their lives.

  Diane had gotten pregnant with Adele that first night.

  And now she held the fruit of that love, their daughter, whose pink face and heart-shaped lips took Diane’s breath away. Her hair was black as gunpowder, and her petite fingers curled into tiny fists as if she were ready for a fight.

  Diane was now soaked in sweat, and her body still ached from the screaming pain of her daughter’s birth. She had not been this helpless since the day Pierre had wrapped his hands around her neck and tried to squeeze the life from her. She would have been in a panic, if not for Gilbert.

  But her husband had saved her—and their daughter—as he helped her through the long, painful birthing process.

  “Hold your daughter,” she said, handing him the baby.

  Her husband cradled their baby in trembling hands still red and scarred by an exploding German shell. Four long years of war had left her husband so accustomed to death and dying that holding this new life was almost more than he could bear. He was afraid to celebrate his daughter’s birth, because loving always led to loss.

  Living with Madame Herbert for so many years had taught him basic birthing skills, so he understood if he laid the child on Diane’s stomach, her body would soon contract and expel the afterbirth.

  Diane laid a hand on her child and watched Gilbert as he untied one of his shoelaces and looped it around the umbilical cord. He double knotted it before reaching for a pocketknife and then dipping the blade in a bowl of rainwater collected in a chipped earthenware bowl. He cleaned the knife as best he could and then wiped it quickly on his sleeve before he carefully severed the cord.

  He shrugged off his shirt and swaddled their child in the plaid cloth. “The war has nearly ruined us. She deserves so much more.”

  “She has us. We have always been enough for each other. And we will be enough for her.”

  He placed the girl in her mother’s arms, and Diane hoped intuition would take over. The baby scrunched up her face but quickly settled into the warmth of the flannel.

  “I will be right back. Are you okay to be alone for a moment?” Gilbert wrapped up the afterbirth.

  “Yes.”

  As he dashed outside with the afterbirth, Diane dropped her gaze to her daughter’s face, taking inventory of her fingers and toes. Almost immediately, she recognized her mother’s nose and the shape of Gilbert’s face. This child was the very best of them both.

  Outside an animal scurried in the darkness as Gilbert returned. He listened closely and reached for the rifle he’d kept propped by the window. Hungry, displaced soldiers were desperate enough to take, even kill, for what little he had.

  She held the baby tighter. “Make no mistake, my girl,” she whispered as she tucked Gilbert’s shirt close to her daughter’s small chin. “I will always love you. Always protect you.” The baby yawned and nestled close to Diane’s breast, unconcerned about words that were only soft sounds to her.

  The baby then cried, and Diane shushed her. “What is it?”

  “She is hungry, no doubt.”

  “Yes.” She remembered all the times she’d watched Madame Herbert angle a new mother’s breast toward a baby’s mouth. She looked up at Gilbert, who stared at her helplessly, and feeling a blush cross her face, she reached for the buttons on her worn blue cotton dress already straining against her full breasts. She didn’t like the dress, but she made do because it had accommodated her growing waistline.

  She freed her breast and exposed a pink nipple and angled it toward the baby’s mouth. Immediately the baby rooted and then latched on as endless babes had done since the first child was born. But the newness for Diane caught her off guard, and she sucked in a breath, shocked at the odd sensation shooting through her body. Small fists kneaded her breast, and the baby began to suckle. “She is eating.”

  “Like her father, she has a strong appetite,” Gilbert said.

  They sat in silence as they enjoyed this very precious moment. Finally, she looked up at her husband, noting already his brow creased with worry. “How bad is it outside?”

  The storm had ripped across the land last night, delivering yet another blow to them. “We will survive,” he said finally. “Some trees are gone, but most are fine.”

  “Wait until the sun rises, and then we can look.” She took his hand in hers. “We will be fine now. It is written in the stars.”

  He sat on the edge of the bed, running his hand over her thigh. “You speak with the surety of a sorceress, and for once I am going to believe you.”

  “I am a witch,” she said, smiling.

  “Your lavender-blue eyes bewitched me a long time ago. I have no choice but to follow you.”

  Tears burned in his eyes, and he couldn’t seem to summon the energy to straighten his stooped shoulders. He was a proud man who loved his apples as passionately as he did his wife and child. She knew he feared the storm would take what little the war had left behind.

  “We will save what we can and replant what is lost,” Diane said.

  “You make it sound simple.”

  “We will love the land as we love each other and our child. And the trees will flourish. We and this land are two halves of one whole.”

  “What will you name her?” he said.

 
“Adele. For my mother.” She had chosen the name months ago when the child quickened in her womb.

  “Adele.”

  The child’s namesake had been a sea captain’s wife, and she had died before her thirtieth birthday. Diane worried the name choice might be an inauspicious omen but cast her doubts aside and chose to believe God would not take back a child who was such a great blessing.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Diane

  Age 48

  Saturday, April 8, 1939

  Normandy, France

  Adele would prove to be their only child, but she was so perfect that neither Diane nor Gilbert ever longed for another. She grew up in the orchards, riding among the trees on her father’s shoulders when she was small. As she grew older, her favorite toy was the planchette, which to her delight sparkled in the light. And as she grew into a beautiful woman, she dressed up in the scarves and clothes Claire sent.

  God had chosen to give them only one child, but she was indeed his finest work.

  From the moment of her birth, their little family had grown strong. Diane often said that the orchards were so intertwined with their lives that each needed the other to survive. She could never say where one life ended and the other began.

  They had not only survived the storms, but in the last few years, Gilbert’s reputation as a distiller had grown to the point that Château Bernard was well known not only in the region but also the country.

  “What do you think of the apples?” Gilbert asked.

  Diane turned and smiled into the face that was now deeply lined. The dark hair was also graying, but the sharpness in his gaze remained. “Still sour.”

  He plucked an apple from the tree, bit into it, and then spat it out. “This worries me.”

  “Perhaps as soon as the summer heat arrives, they will sweeten.”

  “Maybe.”

  She crooked her arm in his, and the two began to walk down the narrow grass path separating the rows of trees. “You’re scowling more than usual.”

  He patted her hand resting on his forearm. “Am I?”

  “What is it?”

  “I have heard from Max.”

  “But he writes to you regularly. What has he said now that bothers you?”

  “The Germans have arrested his son-in-law in Germany. His daughter, Elise, has fled Germany and is in Le Havre.”

  “And Elise’s son? How is he?”

  “Well,” Gilbert said. “Elise is also pregnant again. She’s due any day.”

  Gilbert and Max had both tasted war up close, and both now feared it. Neither man was filled with swelling pride or imbued with a surety that the fighting would end quickly.

  “Max is worried that it will be a matter of time before the Germans march across France to the Atlantic.”

  Gilbert had often said that since the Great War, Germany had been starved and chained up like a mad dog. Each year it had grown angrier and stronger, and it was a matter of time before it would throw off its chains and seek full retribution from the last war’s victors.

  “I’ve heard from Claire,” Diane said. “She asks us again to visit America. She reminded me that America is calling home some of its diplomats, and according to her last letter, Victoria and her husband, Edward Garrison, were planning to leave North Africa and returning to New York. She said the USS Mayhew will be in Le Havre by April 10. We could go to America for a while and visit Claire. It would nice for Adele to see where I grew up. Elise and her son can come with us. Max too, if you think he’d ever leave France.”

  “He’ll never leave,” Gilbert said.

  She regarded her stubborn husband. “You and Max are cut from the same cloth. Neither of you will leave France.”

  He studied her closely. “That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t.”

  “I’ll never leave my home. It took me too long to find it and too much work to save it. But Adele is different. She must leave and go to Claire until we know it’s safe for her,” said Diane.

  “Our daughter is stubborn like her mother,” Gilbert said.

  And her grandfather. “Years ago, my father sent me away, and it broke my heart. There were times when I thought I would die from the loneliness.”

  Gilbert stopped, cupped her face in his hands, and kissed her.

  She kissed him back. “If my father had not sent me away, I never would have found you or had this wonderful life. I understand now he did what he had to do to save me. And now I’ll have to do the same for our daughter.”

  Gilbert hugged her close, and for several moments, they stood, clinging to all that they loved.

  “Adele would never go without us,” she said.

  “Max is having a wine tasting on the eleventh to win the favor of the local authorities. I wasn’t planning on going, but now I see we must. It’s been over a year since Adele has seen Le Havre, and she would enjoy the trip. Once we are in the city, if the Mayhew is in port, then we will find a way to see Adele, Elise, and the child aboard.”

  “Our daughter would go if Elise and the baby needed help.”

  Diane had not been to Le Havre since the day she had last seen Claire in 1909. After that visit, she’d been stalked by nightmares of Pierre that had not left her for months. Since then, she had rarely left the village, content to stay in her orchard and far away from Pierre. The idea of her sweet Adele visiting Le Havre sent a shiver through her.

  Diane nodded and set about packing the few things she would need. In her room, she pushed her hand up under her mattress and pulled out the wooden box that she had taken from Madame LeBlanc’s apartment so many years ago. She opened the lid and stared at the gems sparkling in the planchette. She’d stopped believing long ago the living could speak to the dead as Madame LeBlanc had claimed. But Diane had also learned its true secret and would send it along with Adele to protect her during the hard days that were sure to come.

  Adele was thrilled at the chance to visit Le Havre, and she chatted constantly throughout the day and well into the night. However, uneasiness stalked Diane. Gilbert was not a man who liked to show off, but in this case, he spent the next day selecting his very best bottles for Max’s competition. It was as if he sensed this would be their last outing as a family.

  “Mama, could we do some shopping in Le Havre?” Adele asked. The girl was nineteen now and blessed with thick ebony hair that curled with a slight wave, a peaches-and-cream complexion, and a bright, wide smile that made the boys in the village look twice.

  “I don’t see why not,” Diane said. “It’s been years since I was in the city, but I’m certain there are still shops where young ladies can browse.”

  Their old truck rumbled over the dirt roads and into the heart of Le Havre. Funny, after all these years Diane would have thought she would remember more, but the streets and people were as foreign to her as when she had first visited.

  Gilbert made his way through the city streets. Adele chattered, pointed to several shops, and giggled at the thought of eating pastries from the city.

  However, the deeper they traveled into the city, the more silent Diane grew. When they reached the area near Max’s wine shop, her thoughts shifted to the past. Even after all these years, she could picture Madame LeBlanc’s pale face and the savage bruises around her neck as she lay on the floor of their apartment. A chill swept through Diane as she wondered what had become of Pierre. He was a roach, as Gilbert had once said, and she felt certain he had survived.

  Gilbert pulled into the alley behind Max’s shop, and just as they had a long time ago, they walked through his front door. Bells jingled over their heads, and the familiar scent of wine, cheese, and oak barrels greeted her.

  Max appeared behind the counter and tossed up his hands. Though he smiled broadly, there was no missing the lines of worry etched deep in his face. “Ah, my most favorite people in the world!”

  He hugged Gilbert, kissing him on both cheeks, and did the same with Diane and Adele. “Once I told the other winemakers that you were attending,
they agreed to the competition. There are twelve in all, and I believe one of the newspapers might even attend. Several of the winemakers are determined to put the cider maker in his place.”

  Gilbert scoffed and then laughed. “Let them try.”

  “Adele,” Max said, “my daughter has arrived. I am anxious for you to meet her.”

  Adele smiled, and she pulled her gaze from a crate of wine shipped in from Bordeaux. “How’s she feeling?”

  “Not well,” he said. “She’s been in bed most of the day.”

  “Is she ill?”

  “I’m not sure. Her stomach aches, and she complains of a headache that grows worse by the day.”

  “And her son. How is he?” Diane asked.

  “Sleeping now but unsettled,” Max said.

  “Help me unpack my crates,” Gilbert said to Max. “It will give two old men a chance to catch up and discuss the future.”

  Max held Gilbert’s gaze an extra beat, and he seemed to sense there were things that needed to be said without Adele listening. “That would be welcomed, old friend.”

  Diane led Adele up the winding back staircase to the second-floor room where they found Elise lying in a large bed. Her one-year-old son slept on his back next to her. His breathing was heavy and even, a sign he was in a deep sleep.

  Diane sat on the edge of the bed and touched the young woman’s forehead, now damp with sweat. “She has a fever.”

  “Is it the pregnancy?” Adele whispered.

  “I don’t know.”

  “We passed a pharmacy on the way here. It’s just down the block. I could see about some medicine.”

  Diane didn’t like the idea of Adele wandering the city alone, but it was clear this girl would need more help than she could provide. She dug several coins from her pocket and pressed them into her daughter’s palm. “Go quickly, and do not speak to strangers. This place is not like home.”

  Adele kissed her on the cheek. “Yes, Mama.”

  As Pierre sat in the café and stared over the top of his newspaper, Le Matin, he caught the gaze of a woman sitting at another table. Pierre smiled and was pleased to see her blush. Even at fifty-three he knew his smile still had the power to charm.