“MAMAN, HURRY UP! PAPA’S ALREADY got the car running.”

I hobbled out from the bedroom, my shoes pinching my inflamed feet. For some reason, this pregnancy had felt so much harder than the last two. Perhaps my aging body was working against me.

“I’m coming, Noah. Just run ahead and tell Papa to wait a few more minutes.”

I grabbed Inès, who was somehow still napping soundly, and wrapped her in a blanket. It was the end of autumn but it could have been winter.

I looked at her sweet little face and marveled at her ability to sleep through anything. I guess growing up on a farm and in a café and with Noah for a big brother, she coped the best she could.

“Shall we go?” I asked, once we were all in the car. We were only driving the hundred or so meters down to the cheese room, but with our current load, it seemed necessary.

“You look like a picture,” Serge said.

“What? A picture of an elephant?” I joked. “I feel like I’ve been pregnant for years.”

Serge leaned over and kissed me. He was well used to pregnant Ella by now, and he knew that a little kiss was the best response to these sorts of comments.

“Sorry. I’m nervous,” I admitted.

“What? About talking?” he asked.

“No,” I said, aghast. “I’m worried about my waters breaking while I’m on stage.”

Serge just laughed and told me if they did, it would make for the perfect story. But I wasn’t sure Chuck would see the humor in me overshadowing his book launch. He’d worked for such a long time to arrive at this point, and I certainly didn’t want to do anything to jeopardize his big evening.

It’d been more than five years since Serge and I had confirmed we’d stay in the French countryside and nearly as long since we’d sold Serge’s fromagerie to Fanny. Back then, I didn’t think life could have gotten any harder than it had been when we were juggling a newborn and a farm. Oh, how naïve I was! Now, in comparison, every day felt like I was the protagonist in a French movie—the hilariously ridiculous kind where everything that can go wrong does go wrong, but where love always triumphs. Joining Serge for wine or cheese at the end of most days helped make it all worthwhile.

But tonight wasn’t about us, despite Noah’s belief that, because I was introducing Chuck, it was. It was about Chuck’s book. His epic family saga that spanned multiple lifetimes, and seemed to have taken as long to write. I was so proud of him for finally finishing the draft and finding a publisher. He’d told me that not long after meeting Billie, he’d had a plot breakthrough. I quietly decided that he’d been stuck on something because of Natalia and, by letting her go, he was free to finish writing.

“So, I will take the kids outside while you do your speech if they’re looking like they might act up,” Serge said.

“But I’ll be good. And you will be, too, hey, Inès,” said Noah from the backseat while prodding his sister and trying to wake her up. I raised my eyebrows at Serge, who let out a little chuckle.

“And we’ll meet back up after Chuck’s reading,” I said. “And Noah, don’t mention anything about what you overheard Grandma saying on the phone. You promise?” I turned to look at him, sitting big and proud. I wondered where the years had gone.

“I promise I won’t mention that we are thinking of moving to Australia when the new baby arrives,” he said.

“How is it that you can be so eloquent now, but when I ask you to help clean the house you simply grunt and ignore me?” I said hopelessly. I absolutely hadn’t wanted to tell Noah about the possible move until it was confirmed, but he had his way of running our house and our lives. In truth, I admired his tenacity.

“Anyway, nothing is certain yet, so best not to tell Aunty Billie and Chuck,” I said firmly.

We got out of the car and went inside. Billie greeted us at the entrance with a glass of wine for Serge and water for me. By now, I was used to having her in my French life, but her happy smile would never get old.

“Delicious,” I said, sipping my water. “Thank you.”

“Not long now, El,” she said.

Since Billie and Chuck had met, their attraction had grown into a very stable relationship—more stable than I’d imagined either was capable of, but perhaps Serge and I had set a good example. Or maybe Mum and Ray had, with their ability to effortlessly live in two countries without ever seeming to fight. They’d been in Australia for a few months now, and both Serge and I missed having the extra sets of hands around. Thankfully, they were due back to France before baby number three was set to make his or her arrival. Since the gender reveal and subsequent slipup with Noah, we were still attempting to keep the baby’s sex a surprise. Convincing Doctor Gerard not to tell us was a constant battle.

After Noah had arrived, we’d decided to wait a few years before getting pregnant with baby number two. We’d wanted to get everything running smoothly before adding any more variables into our lives. And with experience, we knew what we’d be giving up; at least I did, with the French cheese and wine.

But then when Inès arrived, she turned out to be an angel. She was sleepy and relaxed, and fitted into our lives snugly like a slice of Comté into a baguette. Serge was smitten with her from birth. And with Mum and Ray in town for her arrival, it had felt remarkably easy. So easy, in fact, that we became a little lax on contraception and, whoops, I somehow found myself four months postpartum and pregnant again. Although the timing wasn’t perfect—when was it ever, really?—we decided that we could always squeeze one more little bébé into our lives. Now we just needed to decide whether that life would be in France or Australia.

“Ella, thank God you’re here. I’m as nervous as a salmon swimming upstream during bear season,” Chuck said to me after making his way through the people milling around the bar area. He was wearing a shirt and tie and a woolen vest. He looked very authorly.

“Chuck, you’ll be great. Have you had a drink? If not, have a quick one for both of us.”

“Thanks again, Ella, for doing the introduction. And for hosting the launch. Where would we be without this place?” he asked, motioning to the cheese room.

I hadn’t told Chuck or Billie about the opportunity that had come up in Australia. I thought it best not to mention it until we’d made a decision either way. And Serge and I still needed to discuss the idea properly. It would be a huge undertaking, moving ourselves and our brood of soon-to-be three to the other side of the world. My heart rate sped up at the mere thought of the flight home with three children. But then again, it wasn’t every day that one of Australia’s leading dairy producers asked your boyfriend to move there to manage the production of their new line of goat cheese.

Serge had been flattered by the offer, but had been too nervous initially to even mention it to me; I was busy working in the café and looking after two kids, all the while pregnant with a third. I’d ended up finding out about the offer from Mum, who had eavesdropped on a discussion Ray had had with a dairy farmer. It appeared that Ray might have helped orchestrate the offer by putting in a good word about Serge’s cheese-making prowess, although I was sure he wouldn’t admit it.

“Shall we just go live in Australia, then?” I’d asked Serge a few days earlier. “Worry about the logistics after you’ve accepted the job?”

“Sure. I guess it’s now or never,” Serge had said, somewhat jokingly.

“Do you really want to go? What about the farm?” I’d countered.

“We’d work something out. Get Jacques and Marie to manage things. They’ve done it before when we’ve been on holidays,” he’d said.

“But would they be happy to do it full-time? Potentially for a couple of years?”

“We can only ask. We could also sell,” Serge had suggested.

“That doesn’t feel right,” I’d said. “Not after everything we’ve done for this place. Besides, we need a backup option in France in case Australia doesn’t work.”

“Are you certain that you actually want to go?” Serge had asked.

“I don’t know,” I’d replied. “Let me think about it some more.”

So, there we were, at our dear friend’s book launch, still trying to decide if we could possibly leave the life we’d created for ourselves here in the French countryside.

I got up onto the makeshift stage to welcome everybody to the café and introduce Chuck. I gave Clotilde a little wave after seeing her slip in through the kitchen. She was wearing a black cap and a baggy black dress, and I wasn’t surprised to see that her effort to look clandestine just resulted in her looking gorgeous. Thankfully, her modeling success still hadn’t gone to her head, and she continued to make time for her old country friends.

I launched into my speech nervously. “It’s not every day an Englishman asks a heavily pregnant Australian woman to introduce his new novel in a country town in France, but then, since I arrived in Chinon, life has never been run-of-the-mill.” I looked over at Serge, who was quietly warning Noah to sit still while gently rocking Inès’s car seat to keep her asleep.

I continued, describing Chuck’s work, and was relieved when I looked over at him to see he’d turned a wonderful shade of red. But he deserved the plaudits. He’d done us all proud.

I invited him on stage for the reading.

I took a seat and drifted into my thoughts, trying to figure out if I was ready to give all of this up. And was I ready to leave France? What had started off as a wild, off-the-cuff adventure to rediscover who I was outside of my relationship with Paul had turned into a very busy, very full life. I had children, I had Serge, and I had a farm and a cheese room. Would I even fit into life in Australia anymore?

“It is this love that brings us together, just as it is love that will help us survive when we part,” I heard Chuck conclude.

His reading was met with warm applause, and the buzz in the cheese room as he signed books afterward was intoxicating. If only I could get tipsy off atmosphere, I thought as I went to find Serge and the kids.

“How was it?” he asked. “I missed the end.”

“It went well. And Chuck was perfect,” I said.

“And you?” he asked.

“Still pregnant, thank God,” I said.

“I can see,” he said, prodding me dangerously.

“Have you thought any more about you-know-what?” I asked Serge, just out of Noah’s earshot.

“Maybe we should wait until number three arrives,” he said. “Reassess after a few months.”

“I think we should go,” I told him. “It really is now or never. And as Chuck just read: ‘It is love that will help us survive when we part.’”

“You’re not planning on leaving me with them, are you?” Serge said, motioning to the kids.

“I wouldn’t do that!” I said, and he chuckled.

“Let’s just try living there for a year. We’ll mark a date on the calendar, see how things go,” I said.

Serge kissed me and handed over Inès.

“Sounds like a plan,” he said and grabbed our son by the hand. “Come on, Noah, we better eat all the French cheese that we can while we’re still on home soil. And I’m going to need a glass of wine.”

“What sounds like a plan?” Clotilde asked, having snuck up behind Serge and me and caught the tail end of our conversation.

“Fancy a trip to Australia?” I asked.

“No!” she said.

“Yes!”

Clotilde had somehow understood what this meant without further explanation.

“I’ll see if I can sort something out with my agent,” she said, just as somebody recognized her and asked her for a photo. It appeared her disguise wasn’t as effective as she might have hoped.

I went to find Billie to tell her the news.

“It was actually Chuck who convinced me to go,” I told her.

“I’ll kill him,” she said with a laugh.

“He made me realize that whether we’re here or there, it doesn’t matter. Love is all that matters.”

“Don’t get all melodramatic on me, El,” she said, rolling her eyes. “And don’t go blaming those hormones,” she added as I pointed to my huge belly and went to open my mouth.

“You’ll be just fine here without us,” I said. “Anyway, we’ll be back to visit.”

“Maybe I can convince Chuck to set his next novel in Australia,” Billie said.

“As long as you’re willing to spend the next decade or so there,” I told her seriously.

“Oh, dear, I need another drink,” she said, dragging me over to the bar.

I looked at the cheese room filled with familiar faces, some French, some English, some friends, and some family, and felt a mix of pride and joy at what we’d established. I knew that Marie would keep things running beautifully, but I would miss it.

I wondered what Australia would have in store for us. It was hard to imagine arriving there, setting up a new life, and I had no idea whether we’d be able to enjoy it as much as France. But I felt ready for a change.

It’d been a monumental adventure arriving here, and now I could honestly say I was excited about embarking on the journey home.