The women came back (three of them) and brushed my hair until it was almost dry then arranged it in a soft ponytail at my nape. They gave me light makeup, taking care with my bruised cheek (the room with the tub also had an oval mirror with scalloped edges on the wall; I looked in it and saw my cheek was not good but still, as bad as it hurt, I’d had worse).
They also gave me undies (no bra, just a pair of white lace panties and they were like panties in my world except a whole lot better).
Then they helped me put on a dress that didn’t fit, it was a hint too big, but it was lovely all the same. A gossamer fabric over a phenomenal crêpe de chine, both the color of a bruised peach. It had a scoop neck that showed some serious cle**age, a gathered bodice that led to an empire waist, and the skirts swept down to my feet, the back of it ending in a small kickass train.
After I got the dress on, they gave me four different pairs of slippers that I tried (they were all beautiful, two embroidered, one with a flat bow at the toe and one just plain satin). But none of them fit, (three too small, one too big) so I went barefoot.
And last, they brought me breakfast which was croissants, jam, fruit and, thankfully, coffee.
Then they left.
I tried talking to them but they spoke what sounded like French and I might know what tout de suite and chérie meant, but I took Spanish in high school so the rest of it was lost on me.
Since Apollo had spoken to one of them in English, which I would assume he’d know she’d understand, I tried to ask for her to come back as she’d disappeared with the women with the measuring tape.
This got me smiles, head tilts, brows drawing and shrugs, so I was thinking they were in the same boat as me and had no clue.
So I gave up.
After I ate, I wandered to the French doors and pulled a set open.
Then I took a step back and winced.
I didn’t wince from pain.
I winced because the rolling countryside was a green so green, a green so extraordinarily beautiful, it was difficult to witness.
In fact, it was so beautiful, it appeared unnatural.
I blinked several times and cautiously moved out onto the balcony.
The view was a unlike any other I’d seen and I’d traveled with Pol, broadly.
But I’d never seen anything like what I was seeing then. That verdant green. The winding, creamy lane that was flanked on both sides by a riot of wildflowers so bright, their stark juxtaposition against that green was unreal.
And that green seemed to go on and on, cut only by steeple topping a church made of mellow rust stone, and opposite that some ways away, a large patch of bushy rows of what appeared to be lavender.
But in the distance, the green darkened in what appeared to be a forest that climbed partly up some jagged topped mountains, their stone a severe gray which was lightened by deep grooves that scored nearly down to the tree line, the grooves filled with snow.
It was phenomenal. Amazing.
Otherworldly.
“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.
In fact, it would be cruel. He’d been blank and impatient that morning and the night before he’d more than once been seriously scary, so I was guessing he had it in him to be cruel. But I couldn’t find it in me to believe the man I’d met the night before would be cruel to his own children.