Chapter 98

Taking advantage of my stay there, I visited my in-laws. It was a pleasant surprise for Paul’s parents to see me; I had dinner with them and agreed to see them again for Christmas, and to stop by for a glass of punch on New Year’s Day. The excitement of meeting them was no longer the same, and at that moment I couldn’t explain why. However, I think that, in some deep corner of my soul, I felt somewhat ashamed of continuing to treat them as my in-laws when I was already a widow, and on top of that I was thinking too much about a man who was not their son. I assumed that everything would return to normal eventually, that one day I would have to leave them behind, put Paul and his family in a special place and think about them properly but without expecting anything more. How I thought about the baby I had lost.

I would never have what was gone again, and that time, being in the house where Paul and I had spent lovely evenings and enjoyed ourselves so much with the family hurt me