Who She Left Behind by Victoria Atamian Waterman

Author:Victoria Atamian Waterman [Victoria]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: historical fiction, Armenia, Armenian Genocide, family saga, generational story
Publisher: Historium Press
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

17

The S.S. Braga, North Atlantic Ocean

March and April 1922

By the end of the first week out from Marseilles, it was too cold to linger overlong on the promenade, but Vicky couldn’t bear to part from Kachadoor so early in the evening. Their walks on the promenade were the only time together they had to speak with any privacy. Victoria was determined to stretch their time as long as she could stand the shivering.

They didn’t speak in the stateroom. The intimacy of conversation in that small, dark space was too much to bear.

Most nights, he went to the smoking room after dinner while Victoria spent time with the other women in the drawing room.

Several of the women played the piano. There were cards, and all manner of fortune telling. Talk centered around marriage, childbirth and the making of babies, and housekeeping. Most of the Armenian women were going to be married, and too many of them had lost the years and mothers from whom they would have learned such things, but none of it interested her as much as Kachadoor’s company.

“Tell me more about Reupen,” Victoria said to him as they walked. “We only exchanged a few letters and spare ones at that.”

“Is he kind?” She hadn’t meant to ask. It wasn’t her place to ask him that. Those kinds of hopes were shared among the women in the drawing room.

Kachadoor’s mouth tightened. “He’s a good man. A good provider.”

He didn’t answer the question.

So, what if he wasn’t kind? Victoria knew she wasn’t in a position to demand kindness. Safety, food, shelter–these were the things she was trading herself for. She burned with the shame of her secrets. She was damaged goods. If she’d told the truth to Ruepen Parnagian, he would have chosen another girl, not a used, tarnished creature like her.

“You are quite fortunate, you know,” he said in the playfully serious way that sent tiny wings fluttering in her belly, to her great shame. “He’s a doctor. You’ll have a nice house in Worcester, where we live. I share an apartment in a building in the city, not nearly so nice, but clean enough and with room for a wife and a child or two if one of us is fortunate enough.”

He blushed at the mention of future children, and Victoria’s chest squeezed with longing for her baby girl.

This was the moment to ask him about his fiancée, if he had one, but Victoria found she couldn’t. She didn’t want to know. Here, on the ship, with the endless sea around them and the sky dark and soft like velvet, they were both more and less than they were. Not Soon-to-be-Mrs.-Parnagian or surely-someone’s-man, not two single people courting, simply Victoria and Kachadoor. That was all they would ever be, so knowing about the girl who waited for him at home would make it all the more painful.

“So, I’ll be a doctor’s wife.” She hadn’t meant to say it aloud, but Kachadoor closed his eyes briefly.

“So you will.”

I think I might prefer to be your wife.

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