“My God,” I breathed, finally believing without a doubt I was in a parallel universe.
There was nothing like this in my world and I couldn’t make this up in a dream. No one could make this up in a dream, it was just that phenomenal.
I determined to take a walk and see it close up but decided to do that the next day (if we weren’t “away” by then). After the activity of the morning, my ribs were killing me, my face didn’t feel all that great, and I didn’t speak French (or whatever) so I couldn’t ask the girls if they had ibuprofen or aspirin.
Instead, I drank in the view until it dissolved in front of me as two names laid siege to my brain.
Christophe and Élan.
I closed my eyes tight and sucked in a deep breath, the kind I’d practiced over and over again the last eleven years Pol had been in my life. And in pulling in that breath, as I’d learned to do and do it well, I controlled the emotion I couldn’t allow myself to feel.
I opened my eyes, and having it under control, I allowed my mind to go there.
Christophe and Élan.
I would never name my kids those names.
But Pol would. He’d totally name our kids names like that. And Pol, being Pol, even if I’d picked out my own names, would name them whatever the hell he wanted.
Unfortunately, he’d lost his mind about something I no longer remembered— but when he did that, the reasons were never really important—and beat the crap out of me when I was seven months pregnant and thus I lost our boy.
And I’d miscarried in my sixth month and lost our girl.
These had bought me the only long blocks of time with Pol that hadn’t included him losing it frequently. Being the biggest ass**le I’d ever met in my life, even he wasn’t that big of an ass**le to blame me for losing our son after he’d beat the crap out of me and I’d eventually hit the ground and rolled down the six brick stairs that led to our fabulous pool.
So he’d treated me like crystal for months after that.
Until he’d stopped doing it.
And even Pol had loved me enough in his way to revert right back to that tender care when we found out I was pregnant again, giving me the first hint since he showed me the true Pol four months after we were married that maybe he could change and we could make a go of it.
Further, he knew I was crushed when I got so far along with our baby girl and lost her, so he kept doing it.
Until he’d stopped doing it again, forever shattering any illusion that he could change and we could make a go of it.
A year after that, carefully timed, carefully planned, I’d escaped.
Now I was here.
My eyes were open but I didn’t see the view to beat all views.
I saw nothing but heard the Apollo of this world saying he would be preparing his children to meet me, something that would be difficult for me to do.
For if he was Pol of this world, and I was his Ilsa, then his children…
I shook my head and took another deep, steadying breath.
Letting it out, I decided that couldn’t be. There had to be differences between the worlds and obviously there were. For the Apollo and Ilsa of this world had kids, and Pol and I did not.
His kids were not what our kids would have been.
No way.
I’d paid a very heavy price for my self-indulgence, materialism and avarice. No God in any universe would make me pay that kind of price.
I turned my mind from that and started to wonder when Apollo’s children’s mother died—if they were young and didn’t remember her or if they did.
And if they did, I didn’t think it was that hot of an idea for them to meet me.