Page 91 of Two Wars and a Wedding

What would have happened if they’d just gone their separate ways after that? What would have happened if Betsy had never gone to Aikaterini’s and met Charles over coffee and cakes? She might have ignored Aikaterini’s invitation to tea and gone to live with that Presbyterian minister like Ethel and annoyed Dr. Richardson, and Charles would still be alive and well and sifting through dirt at Delphi, looking for the next Charioteer.

Betsy went to his apartment. Not inside, of course. She had no idea who lived there now, if anyone. She stood outside and stared at those long windows, so elegantly draped, imagining that Charles was still there, sitting in his bit of Paris in Athens, beneath those frothy Fragonard romps, with his manservant bringing him macarons.

She could picture him there, writing letters at the escritoire, thumbing through a copy of the latest excavation reports, dressing to go to a reception.

There was a whole world in which they’d never met and Charles was still alive.

If Betsy had stayed where she was meant to be and Charles was still alive, might they have met in future? One day, years from now. Betsy spun an elaborate fantasy. An older Betsy, distinguished, wiser. A reception for—oh, something or other. And Charles there, in his evening clothes.

Looking through her, past her, not knowing her.

But alive. Safe.

Herakles faithfully polished Betsy’s bicycle, but it sat unused. Her books and papers lay piled where she’d left them in April. It was September now, and a new term would be starting soon at the American School, but Betsy hadn’t done anything about securing a place for herself or making up the work she’d missed at the end of last term.

Betsy felt like a broken watch, stopped permanently at that moment when Charles had died, the hands frozen in place.

After a month of letting Betsy drift about, Aikaterini appeared in Betsy’s room with a servant bearing coffee and iced cakes.

She waited until the coffee was poured and half the cakes eaten before delicately working her way around to the question of Betsy’s future. “Do you mean to go back to the American School?”

“I missed my exams,” said Betsy dully, picking up another cake and eating it. The exams had been in May, while Betsy was nursing in Vólos. Or possibly Vonitsa.

“You can take them again. I am sure if you asked the director . . .”

Betsy shrugged. It didn’t matter anymore.

Aikaterini set down her coffee cup. “Is it because of the baby?”

Betsy choked on a mouthful of French pastry. “The what?”

“You didn’t know.” Aikaterini’s face was a study, frozen somewhere between consternation and exasperation. “I’ve been so worried for you—I thought you knew—that you couldn’t bring yourself to tell me—”

“Tell you,” Betsy repeated. She had picked up another cake without thinking about it. She’d gone from being always queasy to always hungry. She looked at the cake and then at Aikaterini. “A baby?”

Betsy craned her head down to look at her stomach, which, to be fair, was looking a little rounder than usual in the loose tea gown she had taken to wearing around the house because it was more comfortable than her other clothes and the flowing Aesthetic style felt vaguely like wearing a nightdress. But whose stomach wouldn’t be rounder after lying around the house for weeks, eating tea cakes? “But I can’t—I don’t—”

“When did you last have your courses?” Aikaterini asked.

“Vólos,” said Betsy, her mouth suddenly dry. “In Vólos. In April.”

“Mmph,” said Aikaterini. “Then you are . . . four months along.”

Four months. The beginning of May. Sun slanting through Charles’s bedroom window, the feel of his skin beneath her fingertips, the taste of his lips. The utter shamelessness of it; the thrill of the forbidden, of giving up and flinging herself into her own ruin.

Her ruin. It had only been meant to be her ruin, not Charles’s.

If she hadn’t gone to bed with him, he would never have followed her to Lamia. It was all her fault. For not thinking, never thinking, just doing what she wanted to do and letting other people suffer the consequences. Her mother. Her father. Charles.

A baby?

“Oh my dear. There’s no need. Shhhhh.” Aikaterini scooted off her chair and onto the chaise, wrapping her arms around Betsy, stroking Betsy’s tousled hair, never minding the stains Betsy’s tears were making on the delicate silk of her dress. Somehow, that only made Betsy cry harder. “Shhh. Don’t worry. You’re not alone. I’ll find a way to make it right.”

Betsy shook her head numbly. It couldn’t be right. Nothing would ever be right again.

“I would take it myself, say it was mine—but people would know. Even if I claimed it was the waters. . . . We don’t look enough alike, you and I. And Charles was fair.”

Charles had had brown hair and eyes, although brown was too dull a word for either. His eyes had been like whiskey, lit with lamplight.