Chapter 11

There was champagne at the dinner table the night after Lili was born. They had each been to see her that afternoon, except Angus, who said he preferred to wait to meet her until she was old enough to drink champagne with him. After a careful inspection of every inch of her, including her fingers and toes, Augusta pronounced her “very pretty” and added “surprisingly,” given who her father was. She said she was relieved to see that she didn’t look Italian. The baby was very fair like her mother. Gwyneth could see that the baby was going to be a towhead like both of her own daughters. And Gwyneth liked to say that Sybil looked related to them, and Caroline was just as fair. Bert finally relented when he saw his oldest daughter holding his first grandchild. Bettina suddenly seemed older and more mature as she held her daughter. She kept staring down at the tiny, perfectly formed features, as though wondering who she was and wanting to get to know her. She was responsible for another person now, and it had subtly changed her, even overnight. She thought about what it would have been like if Tony were alive, if he would have been happy, or disappointed it wasn’t a boy. Bettina was happy the baby was a girl, it would be easier for her.

When Sybil came to visit her, Bettina wanted to get up and walk around the room. She felt stiff in the bed after the rigors of the night before, but the nurse wouldn’t let her get up, much to Sybil’s surprise. They all insisted that mother and infant stay in bed and keep warm. There was a roaring fire in the grate, and Bettina looked restless. She was healthy and young, and felt better than she had for all nine months of her pregnancy, which had been miserable. The one thing she knew was that she never wanted to go through it again. Even the agony of childbirth had been worth it to get the baby out of her, and be free of her at last. It had been a time of unhappiness and deep grief for her, with her family’s stern disapproval and Tony’s death.

The next day, Bettina wrote a letter to Tony’s family, telling them that the baby had been born, and that it was a girl, and asking if they would like to see her. It was a respect she felt she owed the man she had married, however briefly the marriage had lasted and how slightly they knew each other. She had been carried along on the wave of girlish emotions and romantic illusions, and she saw now that there was no reality to them. She had married a man she barely knew, and borne a child after one night with him. He felt like a stranger to her now, in spite of Lili, although she was sad that he had died. She wondered if they would have loved each other, after they knew each other, had he lived, or if their families would have prevailed and pulled them apart. Fate had done it for them, and now she had his child.

She felt no bond to the baby yet, and had confessed it to her mother, who said she would in time. She said that the pain of childbirth often made for a slow start, but Bettina’s memory of it wasn’t that it had been terrible. It had been worse than she’d expected, but she already felt better, and what shocked her was that she and Lili were bound to each other for life. It was an awesome responsibility, for a stranger’s child. She wondered who Lili would be when she grew up, who she would look like, what sort of person she would become. Augusta had said that she looked like a Butterfield, and Bertrand agreed.

Bettina had Phillips drop her letter off at the Salvatores’ restaurant. She had written it to his father, Enrico, as the head of the family, essentially asking if they wished to see the child, since she was their son’s daughter. His response came by mail several days later and was harsh. His granddaughter’s arrival didn’t change his feelings toward her, Bettina, or the Butterfields, and he said he wanted nothing to do with any of them. He was still furious over Bert calling Tony and his family unsuitable, and the elder Salvatore would never forgive them for it. And even the baby didn’t alter his decision.

He told Bettina in his response that his son hadn’t been good enough for them when he was alive, and now she and her daughter weren’t good enough for them. He told her there would be no money, which she hadn’t asked for, and not to contact them again. He said that he had four grandsons and no interest in a granddaughter. Bert’s rejection had cut deep and now Tony’s father was retaliating in kind with angry words. It made Bettina glad that she had decided not to give the baby their name. She owed them nothing more. He had rejected her and Lili in every possible way, beyond any doubt. It gave Lili a lonely start in life, with no link to her father, but in the end it was easier that way. Bettina could leave any sense of obligation to them and the past behind. The letter was ugly, but also a relief. She had written to them out of a sense of duty, wanting to do the right thing. The Salvatores had been expunged from her life now, and her daughter’s. Bert was relieved too when she showed him the letter, which only confirmed to him how vulgar they were.

“It’s better this way,” Bettina said to Sybil when she told her about the letter from Tony’s father. “I don’t want to see them again either. I only wrote to him to be fair to Tony. I thought he would want me to do that. Lili doesn’t need them. She has us. And they’re not nice people.” He had been almost as clear about it when she went to see them and told them she was pregnant. They had made it obvious that they didn’t care. And Enrico had spoken for Tony’s mother too. She had never reached out to Bettina after Tony’s death, almost as though they blamed her for stealing him from them, instead of destiny.

Sybil was sorry for her. It was a sad thing to bear a child without a father, and the future wouldn’t be easy. Lili would always wonder about her father’s family and why they didn’t want to see her. Bettina would have to come up with some excuse or explanation. At dinner, Sybil told Blake that the Salvatores had rejected Bettina and their grandchild, and he thought it was simpler too.

“I was afraid they might be a problem, or want money,” Blake told her honestly.

“They were afraid of the same thing,” she said with a sigh.

“She never should have done it,” Bert said, looking stern again, thinking about it, when he mentioned it to Blake.

“She’s not even twenty-two, Bert, she’s young, and we’re all foolish at her age,” Blake said gently.

“Her foolishness has produced a child,” Bert said soberly, “a responsibility and a burden she will have to shoulder forever, for the rest of that child’s life, and hopefully hers.” Having lost two children himself, he did not wish that on her, no matter who the child’s father was, or how unsuitable. “I suppose we’ll have to invent some respectable story about who Lili’s father was. It’s easier to do after a war. A lot of girls married too quickly, and proper young men too. At least Lili wasn’t born out of wedlock.” That would have been an unpardonable stigma the child and Bettina would have carried forever. He was grateful they didn’t have that to contend with, and could put it behind them now. Lili was a Butterfield, and that was that.

“How is she?” Blake asked about Bettina. He hadn’t seen her at dinner yet, since the birth, and it had been a week.

“She seems fine. She’ll rest for the next month, and then she’ll be back among us,” her father said.

Blake was sure that lower-class working women got back on their feet more quickly. But not women in their world.

Augusta was pleased with her first great-grandchild. Bettina had chosen “Augusta” as Lili’s middle name to pay homage to her, and her grandmother was flattered.

“Shame it wasn’t a boy,” Angus had said regretfully, when told of the baby’s arrival, but on the whole it was a happy time, and Gwyneth was enjoying her grandchild. She had stopped her computer sessions when the baby was born, so she could help Bettina adjust to motherhood, which didn’t seem to come naturally to her, and she was outspoken about not wanting more children. Gwyneth told Sybil she’d be back on the computer soon, once Bettina was up again in about a month.

It seemed like forever to Bettina before she was allowed to come downstairs for dinner. She had been permitted to walk around the garden with the nurse a few days before, and she had admitted to Sybil with a grin that she wanted to leap over the wall and run away. She felt like she was in jail in her room with the baby. Lili was four weeks old by then, and Bettina was finally released. It had been a long convalescence for a healthy young girl her age, after a natural event. She had almost regained her figure by then, and wasn’t nursing. They had hired a wet nurse a few days after the baby was born, and Lili was fat and healthy, and had just produced her first real smile. And so did her mother as soon as the doctor pronounced her free and she was allowed to leave her room.

She still had trouble feeling close to the baby, and Sybil wondered if it would have been different if she had nursed, but she had been adamant about not wanting to. She wanted her body back now, and her life. She and Lili would be linked forever, but she showed no signs of being maternal and was perfectly content to let the nurse and wet nurse tend to all of Lili’s needs. The last ten months had been too traumatic, and she wanted to get back on her feet.

The first time Bettina rejoined the family for dinner, Caroline announced that she had been accepted at UCLA and would be going to college there in the fall. She had been wait-listed at Stanford, but was satisfied with her second choice. Andy was already back in Edinburgh after the Christmas break. He was dating a girl there, and Sybil had the feeling it was serious, or could be. Caroline was still seeing the same boy at school, but he had been accepted at Princeton and was going east, so they had agreed to break up in June.

Blake was looking strained. They had some financial issues at the start-up, with the founders losing a great deal of money with some high-risk decisions that had gone badly. He was discussing them intently with Bert, who always gave him good advice. And he had made Sybil aware of it too.

And for the Butterfields, there was still a war on. They no longer had a son in it, but the news from the front was devastating, and the boys were dying like flies in the trenches. Things were going better for the Germans than the Allies. There were gold star banners in the windows of homes all around the city, and across the country, indicating sons who had died. America had been in the war for only nine months, but the death toll was alarmingly high, and it showed no sign of being over yet. And stories of the revolution in Russia were depressing too.

But the mood at the Butterfield Mansion was lighter with Bettina back in their midst, the baby to admire, and Josiah home. Sybil was working on her book again, and hoping to finish it by the end of the year. She kept adding more material to it, and Blake called it the never-ending book. Gwyneth returned to Sybil’s office to create art on the computer. The two women worked side by side for many hours in companionable silence, with an occasional smile or comment.

Sybil was sorry Gwyneth couldn’t show anyone her art, Gwyneth was still keeping it a secret from Bert and didn’t think he’d approve. And Sybil didn’t disagree with her. She was not only challenging the time barrier, but defying the social rules of her world and class, by trying to be a modern woman, which was forbidden to her. Sybil often chafed for her more than Gwyneth did, but it bothered Gwyneth too, to be so restricted from the natural order of things, in a world run entirely by men.

That summer the Gregorys rented a house in Santa Barbara for a month, instead of the one they used to rent in the Hamptons when they lived in New York. It was fun to do something different, and have a change of scene. The summer before, their first in San Francisco, Josiah had been killed and they hadn’t wanted to abandon the Butterfields, and canceled their vacation, but this year things were peaceful. The Butterfields were going to Woodside, and Bettina was taking the baby and the nurse with them. Lili was six months old in July, and a happy, easy baby.

Caroline had broken up with her boyfriend in June as they had agreed to do. She had been ready to let him go by then anyway. She met someone new while they were in Santa Barbara, he was going to UCLA in the fall too. He came to dinner at the rented house in Santa Barbara several times, and he took her out for dinners and movies, and he got along well with her brothers. They went out on his parents’ sailboat a few times, and Sybil and Blake liked him. His name was Max Walker, and he wanted to major in film, which he already seemed very knowledgeable about.

While they were in Santa Barbara, Andy texted a dozen times a day with the girl he liked in Edinburgh, Quinne MacDonald. He asked his parents if she could visit in San Francisco over Christmas, which was an interesting dilemma, since they spent their holidays with the Butterfields, and they weren’t easy to explain. Sybil and Blake had no idea how they would deal with a stranger or if the Butterfields would even appear if someone else was there. And they didn’t want to spoil things.

“I already told her about them,” Andy said blithely.

“You did?” His mother looked stunned. “How did you manage that?” She had never told anyone herself, except Michael Stanton at the Berkeley Psychic Institute, and she wouldn’t have known where to start, without having people think they were on drugs or insane.

“I just told her how it happened in the beginning, and what it’s like,” Andy said simply. “Her parents have a castle in the north of Scotland, and she says it’s full of old ghosts and relatives who died there and people they don’t know but everyone thinks they see. It’s not exactly like us and the Butterfields, but she said it sounds like fun.” It was fun, for all of them, in both families, that was the odd part. And after a year and a half, they were all used to it and had adjusted. They seemed to have no trouble living together and straddling two different centuries under one roof.

“I’d like to meet her,” Sybil said about Quinne, and told Blake. Andy seemed serious about the girl.

When the two families were reunited after their vacations, they had lots to talk about: family news, the baby had grown, and Bettina seemed to be bonding with her a little more with some effort. She had spent most of her time in Woodside riding, and looked happier than she had in a year. She was an expert horsewoman, and Josiah was an excellent rider too. They had spent hours on horseback together in Woodside that summer—and she wanted Lili to ride too when she was older. She had lots of plans for her, which Sybil thought was a good sign. Bettina was having a hard time adjusting to motherhood. She didn’t have the maternal instincts of her own mother. In some ways, Bettina was more like Augusta, and was close to her. She and Angus had been in Woodside too, and she complained about the heat there when they returned, and said she was delighted to be back in the fog in San Francisco.

Sybil thought Angus looked tired and was getting more confused, but his sister kept a close eye on him. Augusta was still clear as a bell, at whatever great age she was. She kept it a dark secret. Sybil suspected she was in her mid- to late eighties, and could even be ninety, judging by the way she looked and the events she talked about.

At the end of August, after Andy had returned to Edinburgh for his second year, Sybil took Caroline to UCLA to settle her into the dorms, and she connected with her new friend Max within an hour of her arrival. He helped Sybil carry Caro’s trunks and bags into the dorm, along with her computer, her music system, and the small refrigerator she had rented. He had already been there for two days and knew where everything was. By the time Sybil left the next day, Caroline barely had time to see her. She and Max were having dinner with friends from other dorms that night. She was off and running in her college life.

It was a lonely feeling as Sybil drove back to San Francisco that night, and she was particularly glad that she still had Charlie at home. She wasn’t ready to become an empty nester just yet, and for a minute she wondered if Blake was right to want another baby. But at forty now, she wasn’t sure about it. What if there was something wrong with the child? And it would be hard starting all over again. She loved playing with Lili, but a baby was so much work and needed so much attention. She couldn’t see herself doing it again. Bettina had a full-time nurse and her mother to help her. Sybil would do most of it herself, as she had before. Charlie was easy now, at seven. He’d been lording it over his friend that he was a year older than Magnus, which Magnus had complained about to his mother and she laughed. Sybil knew that was going to continue happening, because Magnus would be six forever.

The house seemed empty without Caroline when Sybil got back to San Francisco, and she sat down to work on her book in earnest. Gwyneth was spending a lot of time with Lili, and working on her computer during the baby’s naps. Bettina had started writing a family history, and asked Augusta for pertinent information, without explaining why. Her grandmother remembered all the details and gossip that no one else did, who was related to whom and how, whom they had married and who died when. Bettina drew a family tree from what Augusta told her, which helped her keep it all straight while she was writing. Sybil knew it would be a fascinating book, and Bettina said it would take her years to finish. Longer than she knew, Sybil realized as she listened to her talk about it, since she had only completed it when she was eighty, in the final years of her life, so she had obviously stopped writing it for a while at some point.

For the next few months, both Bettina and Sybil spent most of their time writing, and the house was very quiet. Blake was staying late at the office, wrestling with the financial ups and downs of his start-up, and consulting with Bert on it for advice.

The battles in Europe had been fierce that fall, but by October there was some hope that the war was drawing to an end. More than eight million men had died and twenty-one million had been wounded on the battlefields of Europe, and on November 11, 1918, the armistice was finally signed, nineteen months after America had entered the war and lost over a hundred thousand men, Josiah Butterfield and Tony Salvatore among them. Tony had never returned as a ghost to join the others at the house. Sybil thought it was better that he hadn’t. Bettina was young and alive, and needed to meet someone from her own world, whom her family thought suitable, and who would be willing to be a father to Lili. From reading Bettina’s book, Sybil knew it would happen in time. In December, Bettina made a shocking announcement at dinner that no one had expected. She had exchanged letters with friends of her parents in Paris, and they had invited her to come over in a few months, after the dust settled, now that the war was over. They were aware that she had been widowed and had a baby, and they thought a change of scene would do her good, and so did she.

“The Margaux?” Gwyneth said, looking shocked. “We haven’t seen them in years. What made you write to them?”

“I have nothing to do here, Mother,” Bettina said sensibly. “I can’t just walk around our garden pushing Lili in her pram for the rest of my life.” And she didn’t do that anyway, the nurse did. Bettina spent very little time with the baby, and most of her time writing. “I won’t stay forever, just a few months.”

“Will you take the baby?” Gwyneth looked disappointed at the news, because she was having so much fun with Lili, and Sybil squeezed her friend’s hand when she saw how sad she looked.

“I think I should. It will be good for her too, to see new people and new places.” It was obvious that she’d given it considerable thought and made up her mind before she told them.

“When are you thinking of going?” her mother asked her.

“I haven’t decided. February maybe, or March. The war’s only been over for a few weeks. We’ll see how it goes.” Lili would be a year old by then, and Bettina was going to take the nurse with her.

“I think it’s an excellent plan,” Augusta chimed in. “She’s never going to meet a husband here, locked up in this house. And no one’s entertaining these days.”

“They will now that the war is over,” Gwyneth added, and Bettina looked annoyed.

“I’m not looking for a husband, Grandma. Just a change of scene.”

“There’s nothing wrong with having both. A nice Englishman perhaps, or a Scot. Please God, no one French. Will you be going to London?”

“I might. I haven’t figured it out yet. Father, may I go?” She looked at her father imploringly, and he nodded. She wanted to get out of San Francisco for a while. She felt stifled in her life as a widow and a mother sequestered in her parents’ home. She was desperate to get out again.

“I don’t see why not, as long as you wait for things to calm down over there, and all the soldiers to muster out and go home. You wouldn’t want to be there now.” Bettina agreed. “I think it’s a very good plan. Just don’t stay too long.” He smiled at his oldest daughter. “It’s nice of the Margaux to have you. I’ve always liked them.”

Gwyneth reluctantly agreed, although she hated to lose her daughter and her grandchild even for a week, let alone several months. But it was obvious to all of them that a trip would do her good, and there was nothing better than Paris for a change of scene. What woman wouldn’t want to go there? Just thinking about it, there was a new spring in Bettina’s step as she ran up the stairs to her room after dinner, to work on her book. And even if it was a few months away, she could hardly wait for Paris.