Christmas at Croton was quieter than usual that year, but still surprisingly happy. Geoff loved everything he got, and Charles was extremely generous with all of them, as was her father. But it was also obvious that he was not well. He’d had a bad cough for months, and flirted with pneumonia several times that year. And it worried Olivia to note that he was looking considerably older. She wasn’t sure if her sister’s disappearance had even done it to him, he just seemed to be running out of steam, and the doctor said his heart was getting weaker. But they still spent a happy holiday with him, and they drove back to New York shortly after New Year.
They’d been home for two days, when Bertie called Olivia and said that she thought she should come back. Her father was suddenly failing. Apparently, he’d caught another bad cold right after they left, and he had an enormous fever. He’d been delirious all that afternoon, and the doctor wasn’t sure his heart was strong enough to sustain him. She wanted to send Donovan down for her, but Charles insisted he would drive her back himself in the morning. He didn’t like the idea of her going anywhere without him anymore. She was more than six months pregnant, and she was huge, or so she thought, for a woman carrying a single baby. But the doctor was absolutely sure. He could only hear one heartbeat, and each time he said it, Olivia foolishly felt a stab of disappointment.
They kept Geoff out of school, and he went back to Croton with them, and as soon as Olivia got there, she was glad she had come. Her father looked as though he’d aged twenty years in the three days since they’d been there.
“I don’t know what happened to him.” Bertie wrung her hands, in tears, and then looked at Olivia strangely. But she didn’t say anything. She just blew her nose and went back to the kitchen, she knew he was in good hands now. She just wished Olivia could be there, she knew how much it would have meant to him, but at least he had one of his daughters.
Olivia sat with him all that afternoon, and Charles went out riding with Geoff. There was veiy little else he could do. The estate was well run, and there was nothing for him to do there, except keep Olivia company whenever she came out of the sickroom. He had told his office he’d be back in a few days, and he waited patiently as Olivia came and went, making broth, making teas, and using herbs which she was convinced would help him. It made Bertie watch her all the more closely. But she could never quite believe what she was seeing. It wasn’t possible, they wouldn’t do a thing like that. She was imagining things, and she knew it.
But Edward Henderson only got worse in the next day or two, and by the end of the third day they were there, he was having a very hard time breathing. The doctor wanted to take him to the hospital, but he flatly refused, and told Olivia he wanted to die at home. He belonged here.
“You’re not dying, Father,” she said, fighting back tears. “You’re just sick again. You’ll be fine in a few days.” But this time he shook his head and the fever got worse, and that night she sat with him all night, holding his hand, and watching him, and putting a glass of fresh water to his lips whenever he would take it. Her hands were gentle and firm and loving. And she wouldn’t let anyone else nurse him. Charles was upset over it, but as he had always known, his wife was very stubborn.
And it was early the next morning, when Olivia suddenly knew that the end had come, he was gasping for breath and looking wild-eyed, as he begged her to get her sister and bring her to him.
“Victoria, bring your sister upstairs … I have to see her now…” he said, gripping her hand so hard it hurt her to hold it, and for a moment, she didn’t know what to say, and then she nodded and left the room, and came back only an instant later. “Olivia, is that you?” he asked, and she nodded as tears streamed from her eyes. She hated to deceive him.
“It’s me, Daddy … it’s me … I’m home now.”
“Where were you?”
“Away,” she said, as she sat next to him, holding his hand. He didn’t even see that she was pregnant. “I needed to think for a while, but now I’m back, and I love you very much,” she whispered, overcome by her own emotions. “You have to get well now,” she said firmly but he shook his head, fighting to stay conscious.
“Im going … it’s time now … your mother wants me.”
“We want you too” Olivia said, sobbing as she sat next to him.
And then in a small, anguished voice, he asked her the question that had tormented him for eight months. “Were you angry at me for making her marry him?”
“Of course not, Father. I love you,” she said again, and soothed his brow. He was so hot and so agitated and so worried.
“You love him, don’t you?” She smiled at him then, and nodded. Maybe it was better for him to know the truth. Maybe in the end, that would calm him.
“Can you forgive me for making her marry him?”
“There’s nothing to forgive. I’m happy now. That’s why I went away. I have everything I want now,” and he could see in her eyes that she meant it. He closed his eyes for a while then, and drifted off to sleep, and then he opened his eyes again and looked at her with a smile.
“I’m glad you’re happy, Olivia. Your mother and I are very happy too. We’re going out together this evening, to a concert.” He was delirious again, and he drifted in and out of sleep all day, unsure of who she was, sometimes he thought she was Olivia, and at other times, her sister. And by nightfall, she looked almost as bad as he did.
“I’m not letting you stay in that room another hour, Victoria,” Charles said to her fiercely in a whisper, when he saw her in the hallway, speaking to Bertie.
“I have to. He needs me,” she said with equal conviction, and then she went back into the room again. The fever broke mysteriously that night, and she sat next to him, holding his hand, convinced that he was going to be better in the morning. She only drifted off to sleep once, briefly before dawn, sitting in a chair beside him. While she dozed she could see Victoria’s face so clearly she thought she was next to her, and her mother, and when Olivia awoke again, she put her hand on her father’s brow, and then she looked at him, and saw that he was gone. He had gone peacefully to join his wife, convinced that he had said good-bye to both his daughters.
Olivia was crying when she came out of the room, and Bertie saw her and put her arms around her. The two women stood crying for a long time and then Olivia went back to Charles. He was sound asleep, and she lay down next to him, and thought of her sister. Olivia wanted her to know somehow, that their father had gone, and she wondered if she did. Olivia would write to her that day, but she was sorry Victoria couldn’t be there with them. At least he had thought she was. Olivia knew that was something. It had been the only gift she could finally give him.
“Are you all right?” Charles was awake and looking at her. She was lying there, so pale and still that he had been worried.
“Daddy’s gone,” she said softly. They hadn’t called him that since they were children, but she felt like a child again, losing him. She suddenly felt as though she had lost everyone, with Victoria gone, and now her father dying. And yet she had this man, whom she loved so much, his son, and their baby. But all she had now were gifts she had borrowed from her sister. But Charles knew none of it as he put his arms around her gendy and held her.
It was two o’clock in the morning when Victoria woke up, with a very odd feeling. At first she thought it was the child, but when she put a hand on her stomach and felt it moving, she knew that it wasn’t. It was something else. She closed her eyes and saw Olivia sitting in a chair, deathly serious. She wasn’t sick, she wasn’t saying anything, she was just sitting there. And yet Victoria knew that something had happened to her.
“Are you all right?” Edouard asked her, rolling over on his side to look at her. She was driving him now, and he was always worried that jiggling around on the bumpy roads was going to send her into labor and she was only six and a half months pregnant.
“I don’t know,” she said honestly. “Something’s wrong.”
“With the baby?” He sat up, looking worried, but she shook her head.
“I think the baby’s fine … I don’t know what …” It was as though Olivia were sitting right next to her bed, saying something to her and she couldn’t hear it.
“Go back to sleep,” he said with a tired yawn. He had to get up in two hours to arrange for special movements in the trenches. “It’s probably something you ate,” or didn’t. They never had enough to eat these days, and most of them were always hungry. He put an arm around her, and she lay next to him, but she never slept again that night, and for days, she had the oddest feeling.
It was the beginning of February before Olivia’s letter reached her in France, and then she knew what she had felt that night. Their father had died. She felt terrible about it, and about not seeing him again before he did, but she was infinitely glad and relieved it wasn’t her sister.
“It must be very strange,” Edouard said when she explained it to him. He had a great respect for what they shared, and never belittled what she told him. “I can’t imagine being that close to anyone, except you,” he smiled. “Or him.” He pointed to her stomach. But the relationship the twins shared was entirely beyond him.