Gracie went still.
“Wait,” Colette said. “Is Warren the child we're talking about?”
“Correct,” Gemma answered. “Warren's biological father, Theodore Cook, died in May of 1945 during the Battle of Okinawa. Right around that same time, you were no longer able to hide the pregnancy at work, Gracie. The military discharged you. You went to live with your sister in the town of Caribou, Maine.” Gemma's mind spun when she tried to think how difficult that season must have been for her great-grandmother. An unwed, expectant mother in the 1940s who had lost both Paul, her great love, and the father of her child. She'd been fired from her job, forced to move out of her government-provided housing. She hadn't returned to her hometown because she'd been afraid her pregnancy would break her parents' hearts.
“Was it my sister Hazel?” Gracie asked feebly. “In Caribou?”
“That's right,” Gemma confirmed. “As soon as the war ended in early September of that year, Paul started trying to book passage for himself back to America so that he could find you. He made it to D.C. first. When you weren't there, he went to the post office and discovered that you'd had your mail forwarded to an address in Caribou, Maine. He traveled north and knocked on your sister's door one fall afternoon when you were at the house alone.”
“Imagine,” Mom murmured, “what it must have been like to have him show up like that after so long.”
“More than a year had passed since you'd seen each other,” Gemma said to Gracie. “He found you shortly before your delivery date.”
Gracie inhaled audibly, then lifted shaking hands to cover her cheeks. Clarity banished confusion from her expression. “I remember,” she said, then began to cry. “I remember.”
The rest of them got up and congregated around her. They embraced her in a group hug where she sat, reassuring her as she wept.
“I'm so grateful,” Gracie said after a time. “So humbled by his love.”
“What happened,” Simone asked, “after Paul arrived at your sister's house?”
“I believe I need some tissues,” Gracie said. “Then I'll tell you.”
Gemma ran to retrieve the tissue box. Simone and Colette got Gracie situated on the sofa, Simone on one side holding her hand, Colette on the other side, a strong arm on the back of the sofa behind her mother. Gemma perched on the coffee table and handed over tissues.
After mopping at her face, Gracie composed herself enough to pick up the story. “He found me pregnant with another man's child. It was his right to be angry. To reject me. I didn't feel that I deserved his love, but he showed me the most beautiful thing in this world.”
“Which is?” Mom asked.
“Grace.” She blotted beneath her eyelashes. “He told me how very much he loved me. How sick with worry he'd been that he'd lost me forever, how incredibly thankful he was to have finally found me. He wept with relief. I wept too. Because I loved him very deeply, you see. I told him so and we clung to each other for hours. We never did let go, for the rest of our lives.”
“He's with us still,” Colette said gruffly. Of them all, she was the least comfortable voicing emotions. “I'm his daughter and yours. Simone, his granddaughter. Gemma, his great-granddaughter.”
“I still feel surrounded by his love,” Simone said.
“As do I.” Gemma nodded. “He and his legacy are all around us.”
“He wanted to marry me,” Gracie said, “right away. And, of course, I wanted the same. So we married just as soon as we could get a license, and soon after, Warren was born.”
“I noticed on Warren's gravestone that you named him Warren Theodore Bettencourt,” Gemma said. “The Theodore, I presume, in honor of his biological father.”
“Quite right. I worried some over the years that I did a disservice to poor Theodore because I never acknowledged his role in Warren's life in any way except through that middle name. I didn't tell Theodore's family about Warren. And not even Warren himself, God rest his soul, knew about Theodore.” She pursed her lips, balled the tissue in her free hand. “It's hard to explain how difficult it was in those days, for the mother and the child, if a baby was conceived out of wedlock. Paul wanted to protect us both and had the best of motives when he suggested we tell everyone we married in January. If we did that, we could raise Warren as our child. His and mine.”
“Did any of the rest of your family, besides Hazel, ever learn the truth?” Mom asked.
“No. No one except Hazel. The whole time I was in Caribou, my family believed I was still in D.C. Hazel and I were very close. She was . . . God's gift to me.”
“Dad was an excellent father,” Colette stated, “to Warren and the rest of us.”
“That's true,” Gracie agreed. “He couldn't have loved Warren more or grieved for Warren more when he died, had he been his biological father.”
A sweet, pensive silence moved between them.
“Are you disappointed in me?” Gracie asked.
“No,” they said in unison.
“For a long time, years, I was disappointed in myself for the mistakes I'd made,” Gracie confessed. “But Paul had forgiven me completely. He loved me every day without reserve. He assured me that God did not want me crushed by guilt. And so, eventually, I forgave myself. And now . . . Now it's freeing to tell you all the truth. No more secrets.”
