“Can we sit a minute?” she asked.
Without answering, he led her to the picnic table where just a short time ago she had sat eating chicken and beans, drinking wine with Pamela on her lap. He guided her down to the bench, and he sat close beside her.
Vivien breathed in the morning air.
“You can do this,” Sebastian said.
He took her face in both of his rough hands. It had been so long since she’d been touched by a man in this way that Vivien felt her knees actually tremble. Then Sebastian pulled her face toward his, and kissed her on the lips. His lips were chapped, rough like his hands. The kiss was not passionate or long. Before she could think what to do, it was over and he was helping her to her feet.
“Lotte needs you,” he said gruffly.
“Don’t ever do that again,” Vivien told him.
She took another deep breath, then walked ahead of him into her friend’s kitchen.
The silence surprised her. Someone stood at the stove making coffee and scrambling eggs. People sat, stunned, at the kitchen table. Even the dogs, two German shepherds, lay quietly in the corner, staring out at everyone.
“Where is she?” Vivien asked. “Where’s Lotte?”
The woman at the stove said, “With Pamela. In the parlor.”
Vivien thanked her and moved across the kitchen, through the narrow hallway lined with muddy boots and dusty hats and jackets. Pamela’s were there with the others, as if she would come to claim them at any moment. Vivien paused, and pressed the girl’s jacket to her nose, inhaling. The jacket smelled of the outdoors, and faintly of Pamela.
The night she was born, Vivien had sat in that kitchen, making tea for Robert and warming milk for Bo, who was still a toddler. She had run upstairs when she heard Lotte’s screams, and arrived by her side in time to see the baby’s head crowning. Lotte had grabbed her hand and squeezed hard as the midwife ordered her to keep pushing. Vivien watched Pamela arrive in one fluid motion, all of her sliding from her mother and into the midwife’s waiting hands.
“A girl!” Vivien had shouted.
“Really?” Lotte said, lifting her head to see for herself. “Oh, Vivvie, the fun we’ll have with her.”
Vivien hadn’t been there for either of the boys’ births. But she had watched Pamela come into the world. She had sat by her friend’s side, counting her perfect toes and fingers. Look how long they are, Lotte had said. We’ll teach her piano, Viv. They had rubbed the soft down on her bald head, deciding she would be blond and stay blond, unlike Lotte whose fair hair had darkened over the years.
She’s a keeper, Vivien had said.
And now she was dead. Vivien stood in the doorway of the parlor and took in the scene before her. Lotte kneeling by her dead daughter, holding her hand. Pamela lay, dressed in the one dress she owned, a green velvet one Lotte had bought her in San Francisco last year. She has to wear dresses too, Lotte had explained when she showed Vivien the ruffly dress with its smocked bodice and lace-trimmed sleeves and neck. Her hair was too flat and her face was bloated. She hardly looked like Pamela at all.
Perhaps hearing Vivien there, Lotte glanced up. At the sight of her friend, she jumped to her feet and began to keen, wailing and rocking and screaming Pamela’s name.
This was grief, as raw as it could be. Vivien recognized it. She knew what to do.
Vivien stepped forward, and opened her arms.