Marianne’s stomach was churning, and once Julien was gone, she knelt to be sick in the low bushes on the path where she used to walk at night to find the cows. The cows were white and their flanks had gleamed in the dark; when she had sounded a low whistle they would always follow her back to the barn. She could not go inside the house. It would be much too empty. That night she slept out near the hedges where there were migrating birds, little flickering golden things that darted through the dark.

In the morning, she decided she would make a wreath for Victor to lay beside the one she’d woven for her father. As she walked through the fields of Queen Anne’s lace, she was deeply aware of Victor’s absence. How selfish he could be sometimes, how sure of himself, how easy to love. She imagined him everywhere. She sat in the grass, barefoot, gathering the flowers she would use to festoon his wreath, with tiny white roses and wild poppies to decorate the Queen Anne’s lace. Once, in Paris, not long before she’d left, he had come up to her in the corridor and put his hands on her waist. She had firmly said no. She had said it was impossible, but he’d said nothing was impossible and she should know that by now. She was glad Julien hadn’t told her any more than he had. Not the details. That would have been too much. He’s alive to us. That was all she’d wanted to hear.

She went beyond the field early the next morning, out to where the wildflowers were blooming in a riot of color. The bees had all left, in search of empty logs and old trees to begin new hives. It was quiet and she felt her aloneness here now, just as she had felt alone while she was growing up. It was likely the reason she had left for Paris in the first place. It hurt to be so alone. She could move into the village, or go to a city and find work, not Paris, she couldn’t go there, but perhaps Lyon, someplace where she would see people whenever she walked out her door, where the wind would not remind her she was alone. And yet her father had lived here all his life, and had been completely by himself during the years Marianne was gone. He said there was not a more glorious place on earth. In that, she believed he was right. He said that a person could get used to being alone, and perhaps she would discover he was right about that, too.