~*~
That night, Hannah and I slept in one of the beds in the suite that Jacque had rented for us. In the apartment, there were three beds, more room than my sister and mother I were used to. My sister and I didn’t want to be separated, so we slept together. We giggled into the night remembering the taste of the food, the costumes of the opera, and how many women swarmed to my sister to give compliments about our dresses. There had been comments about our dresses being similar to the fashion in Paris. I gushed how the design was all my sister’s.
Several women obtained, almost through brute force, our card and residence in Concord. There were many promises to visit us and my sister’s dresses. In our shared bed, we talked about how she could become a dressmaker. I told her we should run away to Paris where my sister would provide for me, so I could lay on a chaise and eat chocolate and get a huge bottom and have young French men tell me, “Sans vous je ne suis qu’un ver de terre.”
“And what does that mean?” Hannah snorted.
“I am only an earthworm without you.”
Hannah chuckled and squeaked, making our softly snoring mother suck in a gust of air that she let out in a groan. After Mother resumed her blissfully slumbering breath, Hannah asked, “And what is to happen to our fiancés when we go to France?”
“We’ll leave all men behind. It’ll just be us. We don’t need a man’s love anyway. We have each other.”
Hannah giggled. “I almost believed you.”
My heart stabbed in my chest with the dull ache that I had lived with for all of that night. In the next few moments Hannah found sleep, while I could not lose the restless, unrelenting pain in my head and heart.