* * *
I make it nearly a mile through the woods, close enough to spy the enemy’s location, before a bullet tears into my side. I fall to the ground and slide along the forest floor, hoping I can somehow get back to my unit and tell them what I know.
Soon, though, the world seems to tilt and shift. I hear words in the wind, and night comes when it was only daylight a moment before.
“Henri,” whispers Sarah, her hand on my back, “you need to wake up.”
I open my eyes to find her there. Not the skeleton in burned clothing, but whole and perfect, smiling at me as if I’ve nodded off under an apple tree and she’s come to bring me inside.
“You’re not real,” I tell her. “You died. I found you.”
Her palm presses to my skin. “Does that not feel real to you?” she asks. “Wake up. Madame Beauvoir is here and I’m not facing her alone.”
I pull her against me. “Then stay with me here instead,” I tell her. “We’ll sleep until she’s gone.”
Her lips press to mine. “It’s not the time for rest,” she says.
I hear voices nearby speaking French, and the moment I notice them, she’s gone. That sorrow hits me all over again and my hand digs into the dirt.
Come back, Sarah. Please come back.
The voices grow closer. I’m tempted to let them pass and leave me here to die. But then I think of Sarah, who sacrificed herself for my sister. Sarah, who would never have gone down without a fight.
For her, and her alone, I call out for help.
15
SARAH
Over the next few days I become accustomed to life in the hospital, but I’m still anxious and wary everywhere I go, and I’m unable to escape it. When I sleep there are nightmares. I dream that Gustave has me cornered, that the bed is on fire, that Iris has me trapped. Sometimes I dream that Mathilde forgot about the babies, and I watch as she pulls them, still and cold, from that laundry bag where they were hidden.
It’s not much better when I’m awake. Using a walker, I’m allowed to take strolls around the building and down to the park, which I do several times a day, but everywhere I look I see threats of one kind or another. There is a bodyguard with me at all times, but it’s not enough.
I read everything I can about the war in my free time, and that doesn’t reassure me either. I wish I knew how to fight, how to keep us safe, and I don’t. Killing the guards was easy. Protecting our family from nonspecific threats for five years straight is another matter entirely.
It all makes me wonder if I’m ever going to feel safe again.
Rob comes to the treadmill beside mine three days after the incident, as I like to refer to it.
“I’m sorry about the other day,” he says. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
I shake my head. “You didn’t...I just—”
He hesitates and then turns off his treadmill, which was already going so slowly it was barely moving. “Don’t apologize. I don’t know what you’ve been through, but I know it was bad, and I get how you must feel.”
“You do?”
“My sister was raped in college,” he says. “Walking home from class in the middle of the fucking afternoon. It took her years to feel safe again.”
I swallow. “But she’s okay now?”
He lifts a single shoulder. “She married a really great guy and I think most of the time now it’s behind her. She never did go back to school, though. I’m sorry. Maybe that wasn’t the best example to provide. I just wanted you to know I get it.”
In other words, she did not recover, but she can pretend she’s alright for the most part. I don’t want to pretend when I get home to Henri. I don’t want to have a panic attack any time we’re around strangers.
I don’t want to be this person I’m discovering inside me. The one who can rationalize away the things she’s done. The one who even takes pleasure in some of it. Because sometimes, when I picture the shock on my aunt’s face as I plunged the knife into her chest or remember the guards’ screams as they burned alive, I feel warmed by it. That vicious place inside me sated, momentarily. There are times when it seems to be the only thing that brings me joy.
Henri deserves better, and I’m not sure I’ll be able to provide it.
* * *
That afternoon, Cecelia joins me on one of my walks, her bodyguards walking discreetly behind us. Just as we reach the park I feel a prickle between my shoulder blades and glance around us. I see the same things I do every day—old men sitting on benches, toddlers running clumsily over the grass, women smoking with a book in hand.
“What’s the matter?” she asks. “Are you too tired?”
I bite my lip. I’m sure I already seem crazy, given my freak-out the other day, and what I’m about to say won’t help. “I feel like we’re being watched.”
Cecelia pats my arm. “Louis and Philippe are here,” she says. “You’re in good hands.”
“They won’t always be,” I whisper. “I need to be able to defend myself. Do you think you could get me a gun?”
She laughs. “Fragility, trauma and weapons don’t mix well. My goal is to get you back to 1939, just as you arrived before, not turn you into a murder suspect.”
We make a circle of the park, and just before we turn back to the hospital, I spin toward the woods...just in time to see a woman standing there disappear into thin air. My knees buckle at the sight and it’s Cecelia who grabs me before I fall.
“Time traveler,” I whisper. The words are barely audible. I point toward the woods. “There was a time traveler there.”
“You’re sure?” Cecelia asks, lifting her sunglasses to look in the direction I’m pointing. Even from here we can see the woman’s clothes, lying in a heap on the ground.
“I’m sure,” I reply. Why was she here? What does she want? I’m never going to feel safe until I’m certain I can defend myself.
“Even if I can’t have a gun in the hospital,” I say to Cecelia, leaning on my walker and trying to catch my breath, “that doesn’t mean I can’t be taught how to use one, does it?”
She glances from me to that pile of clothes by the woods. “No, I don’t suppose it does.”
* * *
Rehabilitation of my weak, broken body becomes secondary from then on. From sun-up to sundown, my focus is on learning to fight. Cecelia hires two different specialists: a Navy SEAL who teaches me how to shoot and use a knife, and an Israeli soldier who teaches me hand-to-hand combat.
What I appreciate about both men is that neither act like I’m a silly, scared girl. They both treat me as if I’m someone going to war, which is truer than they can even imagine. I’m taught to throw a dagger from thirty feet away, and when I can finally hit a bullseye with my right hand, I’m forced to train with my left. Using dummies, I’m taught how to immobilize my opponent, how to break a neck, where to punch to kill someone immediately—corner of the jaw or nasal cavity. Where to stab someone in the back to puncture a lung, useful because it prevents them from screaming. How to slit a throat, useful for the same reason. When Paul, the SEAL, starts showing me how to stab someone in the chest, I wave him off. “I already know that one.”
Holding a knife in my hands makes me feel calm, and also powerful. It makes me wish I could go back to 1918 with my new knowledge, solely to watch Gustave die. At night I think about how I will punish Coron—how I can manage to trap him and kill him slowly. It’s the lullaby that sings me to sleep on the nights when rage leaves me unable to find Henri, when I’m worried he’ll find me so changed he won’t want me.
But given it’s the rage itself that’s changed me, and that the more I allow it, the more of it I feel, I sometimes wonder if I’ve escaped captivity only to poison myself instead. Killing comes as naturally to me as walking must have, once upon a time, and I’m not sure that’s a good thing.
Henri will fix it, I promise myself. Everything that’s broken inside me won’t stay this way once I’m with him again. It can’t.
“So, tell me about this fiancé of yours,” says Rob, on the treadmill beside mine, where I find him most days now. He has a bit of a crush—perhaps because I’m the first female who’s ever shot him down. “Is he famous? He must be famous.”
I smile. “No, not in the least.”
“Well then, can you tell me why he isn’t here?” Rob asks, arching a brow. “No offense, but under the circumstances, the guy should be here.”
“He’s…fighting. He’s in the military,” I reply. “He’ll be home soon.”
“Well, if something changes,” Rob says, “let me know.”
“Nothing’s going to change,” I reply.
Inside I say a silent prayer that it’s actually true.
* * *
At the end of the second week, Louis comes to collect me, as Cecelia promised he would. Though I’m not ready to run a marathon, I can walk a mile on the treadmill at a relatively normal pace, which is more than I can say for Rob.
I pop my head in the gym as I’m leaving, clad in the jeans and a t-shirt I purchased here the summer before. Rob sees me and comes over, still using his walker.
“That’s just cruel,” he says, “walking in here in those jeans just to say goodbye.”
I smile, choosing to ignore that. “It’s been fun. Good luck with everything.”
He nods at Anna, his assistant, who hands something to Louis. “Anna just gave your bodyguard all my numbers. If things don’t work out with Henri, give me a call. I’ve got another month here before I start my European tour. You can be my plus one, no strings attached.” He grins. “I mean, I’d prefer it if there were strings, but I’ll live if there aren’t.”
I laugh and lean forward to kiss him on the cheek. “Good luck, Rob.”
“Henri’s a lucky man,” he says. “I hope he realizes it.”
I force a smile. The truth is that I’m the lucky one. I just hope my luck continues to hold.
* * *
I’m taken from the hospital to another of Cecelia’s beloved spa appointments, where I’m waxed and scrubbed until I shine, where my hair is cut and my nails are done and my brows are plucked. From there, I’m taken to a gorgeous flat, just off the Champs-Élysées, with all my belongings waiting for me in the master suite. I know I should relish it all, but in a day’s time, I’ll be back with Henri, and I hunger for it so much I can barely notice anything else.
On the day of my departure, I rise early and find myself pacing, too excited to sit still. When Cecelia arrives with a bagful of croissants, I take one and sit with her in the parlor, though I’m too nervous to eat.
She pours coffee for us while I bounce on the edge of the couch like a little girl who needs a bathroom badly.
“I have a favor to ask,” she says carefully, handing me a cup of coffee, “and it matters a great deal to me.”
I take the cup she proffers, nodding, ready to agree to anything as long as it gets me home to Henri. “You originally did not arrive until October twelfth,” she says. “And because you were very unwell that time, you had to recover, so you remained there.”
My stomach tightens into a knot. “I’m going to remain there anyway.”
She doesn’t meet my eye. “I know. But I’d like you to promise me…that you’ll stay. To go sooner could be disastrous. I wanted to help you and make sure you got better medical care this time, though to be honest I can’t remember why I wanted it—I suppose because whatever went wrong the first time has been corrected. But the date. The date is important. And you could destroy everything by arriving too soon.”
“I’m planning to stay forever,” I reply. “I don’t understand why we’re even discussing this.”
She averts her gaze, but not before I see that worried thing in her face.
“Cecelia,” I say, forcing a calm to my voice I don’t feel. “Why wouldn’t I want to stay?”
She hesitates. “Things…may not be exactly the way you want them to be, at first. You’ll need to be patient. I don’t want to tell you too much, because knowing might change it all. Just please promise you’ll stay.”
I don’t like the sound of any of this. I know Henri waited for me. What more could I possibly want? “If Marie-Therese refuses to go to America after everything we just went through, I’m probably going to kill her myself.”
She doesn’t laugh. She doesn’t even smile. “Promise you’ll stay. It means a great deal to me, personally.”
I close my eyes, shutting out the concern on her face. She has no idea what’s in my heart. Even if the war is encroaching and food is low, there’s nothing that could make me leave Henri’s side after everything we’ve been through. “I promise I’ll stay. If he’s alive, that’s all I need.”
She squeezes my hand. “Remember you said that.”
16
SARAH
I land in the barn, as always. This time, however, I land in the loft, and send an entire bale of hay crashing into the stalls below me, nearly falling right over the edge with it.
The horses panic at the falling hay and begin to bray inside their stalls. For a moment, I just laugh, with tears in my eyes. I’ve made it. What kind of miracle is it that I’ve survived so much and finally made my way back to him? I climb down the ladder, still a bit stiff after so many months of immobility. The blanket hangs just inside the barn door, waiting for me still.
I throw it around myself and walk into the yard, under the light of a newly rising sun, just as Marie opens the door.
“My God,” she grouses loudly. “What is it now?”
And then our eyes meet, and the color drains from her face. “No,” she whispers. She blinks hard. “It isn’t possible.”
Henri appears in the door at just that moment and the two of them stare at me.
“Amelie?” he rasps, half question…half something else.
I nod and then he is crossing the yard to me, pulling me against him so hard I can barely breathe. Marie runs and throws her arms around us both, sobbing. “It’s not possible,” she says again and again. “We found your bones. It’s not possible.”
“Thank God,” whispers Henri gruffly, his mouth pressed to my hair. “Oh, thank God.”
He’s gripping me so hard that it hurts, my body still tender and bruised from those months in the hospital, and I never want it to stop. I dreamed about him, I visited him, and yet his heat, his smell, his size…all of it was never this. Never entirely real.
“Henri?” A woman’s voice, coming from behind them. “What’s going on?”
He stiffens.
And my stomach drops. I know, even in my confusion, even as my brain begins to deny the truth, that in the woman’s voice I hear possession. I hear someone who believes she owns the rights to Henri’s thoughts. And his embrace.
His grip on me loosens. I look up and see dawning horror in his face, his and Marie’s both.
The woman crosses the yard. She looks quite like me: my height, hair the palest blonde. But with one key difference. She is very, very pregnant.
I stumble backward, my head shaking, denying what I clearly see in front of me. I wait for Henri to explain, to deny it, but I only see apology in his eyes. Such apology.
The pain of it makes me sway, and Marie seems to realize it. Her hand goes to my back to keep me upright, while Henri stands still, pale and frozen. I was only gone for ten months. It would be bad enough if he hadn’t waited that long but…from the looks of it, he didn’t wait at all.
My mouth opens. I want him to tell me this is not what it looks like. That he didn’t move on right after I left, while I spent month after month doing anything I could to get back to him. Tell me she’s carrying someone else’s child. Tell me you did the honorable thing because I wasn’t coming home. My brain whirs with the possibilities, but no…she crosses the yard to us and he steps away from me. She takes his hand.
And he allows her to do it.
“What in God’s name is happening?” she asks.
Henri’s mouth opens as if t
o speak and then closes. It’s Marie who recovers first. “Our cousin Amelie has come for a visit,” she says through a dry throat. She flinches hard. “Amelie, this is Yvette, Henri’s wife.”
Henri’s wife.
I knew, somehow, but the words…the words still take all the air from my chest.
My knees wobble and the weight of the journey descends, as I knew it would. For the first time ever, I’m glad to go unconscious.
* * *
When I wake it’s dusk. For a single moment I hear the sounds of the farm, feel the pulse of country air through the window, and I am happy.
Then I remember, and the pain of it turns me inside out. There’s nothing left to me but this ache, a single sharp wound I feel in every nerve ending. I turn face down and cry, stifling my sobs with my pillow.
It doesn’t feel real. It can’t be real. Yet it is.
After everything I lived through, everything I endured to get back to him, I never dreamed the most painful moment would be arriving here. I am stripped down to nothing, empty. I should never have jumped out of the window to escape. Dying there would have been easier than this, painful but brief. Over already.
That I have returned to discover I’ve lost him is too much to bear. But the betrayal—that is the part that cuts knife-sharp. I loved him with my entire heart. I thought what we had was inviolable and perfect. Worth any sacrifice. But he didn’t wait. He didn’t wait a year. He didn’t even wait months.
I start doing the math, wanting an answer that won’t hurt, though I know I won’t find it. She looks like she’s almost due, which means she’s been pregnant since last winter, and surely there was some courting beforehand? A month or two at the very minimum, which means he waited weeks, or perhaps days.
I cling to the rage that thought inspires. Because rage is the only thing that’s going to get me out of this bed and the fuck out of here. I’m tired, but not the way I was before I gained my aunt’s spark. I could survive a trip home now, I’m guessing.
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