“What does it matter if I do?” Emmy said, rising from the bed and reaching for her clothes. Loving Mac changed nothing about who she was and what she had done.
“Isabel.”
She turned to him.
“Please don’t let the unhappiness you knew in the past keep you from accepting happiness now,” he said. “Please don’t.”
The pulling and twisting of her two identities—Emmeline’s past, Isabel’s future—was making her head spin. “I have to get back. Charlotte will be worried.”
“Isabel?”
“I—I can’t think about the future right now, Mac. Please don’t ask me to.”
He said no more about it. He said hardly anything as he walked her to the train station.
Emmy returned to Thistle House and made her apologies for having stayed overnight without letting Charlotte know. Then she told Charlotte what had happened at the lawyers’ office, and at the Thorne mansion.
She didn’t tell Charlotte she’d slept with Mac.
But Emmy thought Charlotte knew anyway.
Mac rang her twice in the weeks that followed, and Emmy kept the calls short, something she had not done before, not when it came to Mac. But his unanswered proposal hung between them like a gift she was too afraid to reach out and take. Her heart ached for Mac, but sleeping with him had been reckless and selfish.
And not without consequence. Seven weeks afterreturning from London, it was clear to Emmy that she was pregnant.
As Emmy vomited again and again into the toilet, and as Charlotte placed a cool cloth across the back of her neck, a terrible longing filled the emptiness that gripped her stomach. She missed her mother.
“I want my mum,” Emmy rasped to Charlotte, between heaves.
Charlotte leaned over her and kissed the back of Emmy’s head. “I know you do.”
Through all the years of the war, Emmy had awakened each day as Isabel Crofton. But she was still Annie Downtree’s daughter. Mum had stood where she was now: alone, pregnant, and reeling from choices made in weakness. Mum alone knew where to find the strength to keep putting one foot in front of the other despite the stares, the empty days, and the lonely nights.
Mum knew how to survive in a world without dreams.
“I don’t know how to do this,” Emmy finally whispered.
Charlotte sought Emmy’s gaze, maneuvering her face close to Emmy’s. “Tell Mac. He loves you. I’ve known it all along. And I think you love him, too. This child is as much his as it is yours.”
Emmy blinked back threatening tears. “But... Mac is American. When the war is over, he will go back to America.”
Charlotte looked down and nodded. “I know.”
“You... would want me to go? Leave here?” Emmy could hardly form the words. Thistle House had been her refuge, a sanctuary after the war had taken everything from her.
“We’re not talking about what I want.” Charlottereached for Emmy’s hand. “This is about your life, not mine. You need to make your way back into the world, Isabel. You’ve a place in it. You need to find what it is. I know you’ve said you won’t ever sketch another bridal gown, and maybe you won’t, but you were meant to do something with your life. I can’t believe it’s to sit in Thistle House and watch time pass you by.”
“But I feel... safe here,” Emmy said, scarcely breathing.
“Safe is not the same thing as happy. Trust me on this, Isabel.”
They were quiet for a moment.
“I won’t know what to do with myself in America,” Emmy finally said.
Charlotte smiled. “You will build a life with the man you love and the child you created. You’ll figure out the rest. That’s what we all have to do.”
Another stretch of silence passed as Emmy contemplated a future with the only man she could ever see herself loving. It seemed too grand a thing to imagine; it had been too grand for Mum.
