Consider the seasons of grief she would have experienced: the death of her companion, the death of the child, the death of Damienne.

Each death representing both the loss of someone she cared about and the increase of her practical isolation — one fewer person to share the work, to maintain the fire, to provide the social contact that makes existence bearable.

Two and a half to three years is long enough to become a different person than you were when it started.

Long enough for the memories of France — the household, the court, the food and warmth and company — to become abstract rather than immediate.

Long enough to become, in some fundamental way, someone who knows how to do things she had never imagined doing.