Across Eternity

by O'Roark, Elizabeth

  The door slams behind me and I stand for a moment, feeling the pulse of fury in my brain, the desire to destroy. Cece is heavy in my arms, reminding me how ill she is—not since she was a newborn could she have slept through an exchange like that one. I place her in the pram and force myself onward, to the queue at the grocer’s.

  If Roche knew who he was dealing with, I think, he wouldn’t have been so high-handed. And God knows I’m tempted to show him.

  I reach the grocer’s just as the sun is rising. The women in line eye me with suspicion. In better times, they were friendly enough, but now I’m the worst of all possible things—a homewrecker, an American, and tainted by association with the Durands. The only way I could make it worse at this point is if I were also a Nazi, and then at least they wouldn’t be openly rude. Claudette Loison, the girl who fancied Henri so much back in the day, is among them. She whispers to the woman behind her and then turns back toward me. “Whore,” she mouths, so I can see.

  I’m not someone you want to trifle with, I think, and then force my gaze to Cecelia—a visible reminder that I must be level-headed right now, my best self. I get our things and proceed to the butcher’s. His wife offers me canned sardines and I lean toward her so I won’t be overheard. “Is there anything else you might be able to spare for fifteen francs?”

  Her eyebrows go up. “Since when do the Durands have fifteen francs to spend?” she asks.

  I’d almost forgotten Henri’s charade of being poor. “They still don’t,” I reply. “But I do.”

  She gives me an almost imperceptible nod. “I can give you a ham. My husband will meet you in the back.”

  Within a few minutes, I’m on way with a ham wrapped in paper beneath my arm. The basket is heavy but when I picture how delighted Lucien and Charlotte will be with my haul it all seems worthwhile.

  I walk along the main road, ignoring the eyes on me as I pass, and breathe a sigh of relief as I turn toward the farm. Finally out of sight, I set the basket down, rubbing the welt it’s left on my inner arm.

  “Nearly there,” I tell Cecelia, who looks up at me with pale eyes, more listless than she was even when we left. I slide my finger against her palm, and her hand tightens around it, a reflex. “When we get home, I’ll mash you up an apple and some ham and you’ll be right as rain.” My voice cracks on the last word. I no longer believe my promises to her.

  I reach for the basket, and straighten, but just as I do, something slams into the back of my head. The pain makes the world go black, and I fall. It’s impossible to think, to understand what’s happened. For a moment I don’t remember where I am.

  Cecelia.

  Panic has me struggling to push my face up from the ground. My sight returns but I’m so dizzy that my stomach rolls as I climb to my feet. Cecelia is still in her pram, thank God, but my basket and the ham are gone.

  I sway, trying to make sense of it. Until this moment, I thought it must be an accident. A falling branch, perhaps. But it was intentional. A hit hard enough to kill me. Whoever ran off didn’t care that he was leaving an infant here to freeze while her mother bled to death on the ground.

  That rage—simmering for weeks—boils over, staining everything, spilling poison in my brain. Not just for my assailant, but for all of them: the Nazis, the French police doing their dirty work, the women in town whispering slights as I walked past. Monsieur Roche and this job he’s made Henri do. Jeannette and Marie for leaving. Doctor Nadeau for refusing to help us.

  Right now, my capacity for harm may exceed anything my grandfather or aunt ever dreamed of. I want to kill everyone who has ever hurt us, though I’d settle for jumping back in time a few minutes and teaching whoever struck me the most painful lesson he’s ever endured.

  Except the children are at home unattended and Cecelia needs to get inside. Focus, I tell myself. You have to put them first.

  My hands shake as they wrap around the handles of the pram and I begin to limp home. My ears still ring from the hit and my vision remains slightly blurred. I haven’t touched the back of my head but it feels wet.

  I get to the farm and walk in the door to find the bookcase on its side and broken. Charlotte and Lucien are both crying but unharmed, and I want to cry too.

  What am I going to do? How am I going to get us out of this mess?

  “Your head is bleeding,” Charlotte says through her tears.

  I know she’s talking about the cut, but it feels like so much more than that.

  * * *

  I don’t normally pray and I’m not even sure what I believe in, at this point, but once the children are in bed that night I fall to my bruised knees and beg anyone listening for help. “Please help Cece get better. Show me what to do for her. Please bring Henri home and help us find a way to get out of here.” I ask and ask, but when I’m done the house is silent. Absolutely nothing has changed, and I know it’s not going to. And that feels like an answer, in and of itself.

  No one is going to help. No reinforcements are coming. But God left us a weapon, one it’s high time I used.

  Me.

  41

  SARAH

  I get off the floor.

  My tears have dried and I feel empty now, and calm. My blood slows and my sight sharpens. Fear is replaced by cool certainty, and I welcome it.

  Nadeau will cure Cecelia. Roche will tell me how to find Henri and provide me the documents he owes us.

  I just went about it all wrong. And time travel will allow me to do it again, the right way.

  Normally, when I time travel, I do so from the barn. Tonight, though, I just go into the kitchen. I close my eyes and go back to the evening before. Some previous version of me sleeps nearby and I freeze for a moment, worried I’ll wake her. But there isn’t a sound. She continues to dream, blissfully unaware of how terribly her day is about to go.

  I dress in trousers and a sweater that hang by the fire and I sneak out of the house, sliding through the shadows in town to Roche’s home. When I reach his locked door, I know I should be terrified, and perhaps some distant part of my brain still is, but anger is like an ice-cold drink on the hottest day. It makes me feel new again, and capable of anything.

  I consider my options—knocking on his door or time traveling inside on my own. I go for the latter. He’s stronger than I am and may be armed, so I want the element of surprise on my side. I focus on the interior of his house, and fade, landing inside perhaps a second earlier. He’s a sound sleeper, which is unwise given his profession, and unwise given the enemy he’s made in me, though he’s not aware of it yet. His snores continue unabated while I open his door to get my clothes from his front stoop, and don’t stop until I’m standing beside him, pressing my blade to his neck. He gasps as it punctures the skin. “I’d be very careful, were I you,” I tell him. “I’m barely a millimeter from a very important artery. And before you do something stupid, know this: you won’t be the first person I’ve killed, and I sort of enjoy the experience when warranted. Now tell me where Henri Durand is.”

  It sounds believable. Perhaps because every word of it is true. His nostrils flare but, to his credit, he doesn’t try to attack me. “He met the people in Paris. That’s all I know.”

  “So how do I reach the people in Paris?”

  “I don’t know,” he says. “They contact me, not the reverse.”

  I press the blade against his neck more firmly and allow it to nick his skin. “How sad for you, then.”

  His teeth grind together before he concedes. “Go to the Café de la Mairie. Tell them you’re tired of chicory and long for a single sip of real coffee, then ask for Robert. Now get that blade off my neck.”

  “Not so fast,” I say, leaning closer. “There is still the matter of the papers you owe Henri.”

  “I don’t have your papers!” he shouts. “And Durand didn’t get the job done, so you won’t be getting them.”

  “Sit up,” I hiss. “I’d like you to watch something.”

  Still holding the bl
ade to his neck, I pull another knife from my jacket with my left hand and throw it at the rosary hanging from his bookcase. My gaze remains on him as the chain breaks and the beads spill to the floor, and then I lean in close. “I am capable of doing things you can’t even dream of, and I want my fucking papers.”

  I’ve spent years asking nicely and pleading for what I need.

  As he unwillingly moves to his desk to get what I’ve demanded, I realize I should have done it this way all along.

  * * *

  Just after sunrise, a few hours after I’ve left Roche’s house with our papers, I go to the site of the attack. Whoever threw that brick at my head is about to pay dearly for what he did. I hide in the bushes, longing to warn myself as Cecelia’s pram comes into view. That brick comes sailing through the air, striking with a force that makes me wince as I watch it happen.

  Someone rushes up to grab my basket. It’s only when she turns to flee that I see her face.

  Claudette Loison.

  Claudette left me on the ground bleeding and perhaps dead, left my sick daughter out in the cold to freeze. Somehow the fact that I know her only makes my fury greater. If I’d planned to let her off the hook—though I really hadn’t—this discovery would have put an end to it.

  I spring from the bushes, felling her with the same brick she used on me. She’s knocked unconscious by it—which is probably for the best—and I pull out my knife.

  It would be so easy to kill her right now. My blood hums with desire for it, and she deserves just that for leaving Cece so vulnerable. It takes all my restraint to hold back.

  It’s not her life I need right now, though—it’s her finger.

  I cut off her pinky and place it carefully in my pocket. And then I leave her on the ground, to die or not die, just like she left me.

  * * *

  For the last stage of the plan, I return to regular time. Dr. Nadeau doesn’t sleep as soundly as Roche and is fumbling for his glasses when I walk into his room—holding Cece on my left side and a gun in my right hand.

  He winces at me and turns on the lamp beside him, flooding the room with low, flickering light. “What the hell are you doing?” he sputters. “Put that thing away.”

  “I’d be happy to,” I reply. “As soon as you treat my daughter.”

  “You really think you can threaten me?” he asks. “I could destroy your entire family with a single word.”

  “I could destroy yours as well. And if my daughter isn’t cured tonight, I will. I know where your son lives. He’s a dentist in Reims, correct? I met him and your sweet little grandson at mass once.”

  For the first time I see fear in his eyes, and I relish it. I’ve been terrified for a month because he refused to help Cece. It’s about time he discovered what it’s like. “You wouldn’t,” he says, though he doesn’t sound certain. “He’s just a child.”

  I laugh. “The little girl I hold in front of you is just a child, yet you were willing to let her die.”

  He snorts. “That wasn’t murder. You could have found another doctor. I would never hurt someone intentionally.”

  “Well, you and I are different in that regard,” I reply, pulling Claudette’s finger from my pocket and placing it on the nightstand. He’ll know who it belongs to by now. I’m sure the whole town has heard about this morning’s attack on Claudette, and I’m sure she made herself sound absolutely blameless.

  His jaw drops. “Claudette—” he says with a gasp as he puts it together. “How could you?”

  He was willing to let a one-year-old die simply because she’s a quarter Jewish, yet Claudette’s loss of a pinky is the true crime? “Because you have placed me in a desperate situation.” I bring Cece forward. “Figure out what’s wrong with my daughter and fix it. Now.”

  He barely even looks at her. “Rash and listlessness following a case of strep throat,” he says. “It’s rheumatic fever.”

  Which happened because you refused to treat her. He is responsible for this and he doesn’t care—feels no guilt at all, even with her sweet little face staring up at him. “Fix it,” I hiss.

  He raises his hands. “You need penicillin for that. I’ve had none since the war began.”

  This stupid man still believes he’s in charge.

  “Would you like to see something interesting?” I ask with a smile. “Something you can’t even imagine possible?” I walk to the far end of the room, place the gun on the desk, and lay Cece on top of my coat.

  And then I disappear. I hear his gasp as it happens and he’s still sitting there, thunderstruck, when I reappear beside him. I’m naked now, of course, but he’s so stunned he hardly seems to notice.

  “How did you—” he begins.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I say, returning to my clothes, which sit on a pile on the floor next to Cece. “You’re under the impression that you can warn your son and grandson before I get there, but guess what? If I don’t walk out of here with enough penicillin to cure her, I can go back to the previous day and do what I want to do. I can go back a year. I can go back thirty years and make sure your son never even exists.” I finish dressing and pick Cece up, holding her close. “So, I suggest you figure something out.”

  He shuffles across the room to a drawer and hands me a vial of penicillin.

  “More,” I demand.

  He raises a brow. “I know some of your secrets too, you know. I saw you walking home with Jeannette Olatz’s children that day she disappeared. I know they’re at your house.”

  I still. This man who now hates me, and hates my daughter, knows about Charlotte and Lucien. And he thinks he can threaten me with that information.

  It makes what might have been a difficult decision quite easy.

  I pick up the gun and fire.

  42

  HENRI

  Stevens is dead. They shot him only an hour after we were caught, and the rest of us had no choice but to keep moving, bound together as we are with a German rifle at our backs. By the time we stop for the night, we’ve been marching for twenty-four hours straight. If I were to guess I’d say we’re heading northeast. Probably toward the labor camps in Germany.

  “We’re moving fast now,” Quinn says to Price as we’re led out of town. “Is it everything you hoped it would be?”

  We stop in Mirepoix and are handed over to a commander there, who has a much larger group of prisoners under his command. We’re held there nearly a week, unfed, huddling in a ditch for warmth, as more prisoners arrive. Occasionally, someone is dragged into the square, seemingly at random, and shot. It’s how the Germans remind the townspeople that even here in the free zone, they are not actually free.

  At the end of the week, we are led onto a road heading east. We walk in silence all day. It’s only when the soldiers are off cooking their evening meal and setting up their tents that we dare speak.

  “You’re looking unhappy these days,” Quinn says.

  I glance at him. It’s sometimes hard to tell if he’s mentally defective or just endlessly optimistic. “I imagine we’re all looking pretty unhappy these days.”

  “Don’t worry,” he says. “Your girl will wait.”

  “That’s not what I’m worried about,” I reply. In truth, though, what scares me most does relate back to Sarah. He’d just never believe it if I told him.

  I’m worried she’ll come get me herself.

  43

  SARAH

  We arrive at the first checkpoint outside Saint Antoine just after sunrise. I never dreamed I’d set out for Paris with a suitcase that holds mostly food, leaving the children’s things behind, but we can’t drive once we reach the city—it’ll invite too much suspicion—and with Cece in my arms, I won’t be able to carry much else.

  Though it’s February, I’m sweating as if it’s the height of summer. Nerves, possibly, or perhaps just the fact that I have wads of cash stuffed between my skin and the dress.

  All my confidence from the night before is gone. The desire to kill is st
ill there, and still strong, but when I faced down Roche and Claudette, I only had to worry about myself. Even with Cece there, I was confident I could take on Dr. Nadeau. Now, though, there are three children to protect, and at any one of these stops it could all go awry. I have two knives on me and a gun hidden under the seat, but I’m still human. I can only kill so many people at once and will be assuring my own death if I attempt it. What happens to the children then?

  The whole plan feels increasingly uncertain. Though I managed to get Edouard’s location from the monsignor’s office—violent threats once again saving the day—there’s no guarantee Marie is there, since Edouard is apparently still a priest. But whether she’s there or not, Edouard owes my family a debt. He’ll find a place for us to stay or pay heavily for his failure.

  The line is backed up. My gut tightens as I watch a soldier force the couple ahead of me to get out of their car and walk to the side of the road. Their luggage is removed from the trunk, and I begin to panic.

  What if they do the same to us? Time travel would be useless here. Yes, I could jump back a day or a week, but I’d still land here, an hour from Saint Antoine. Who would I even warn?

  The soldier off to the side gestures me around the car being searched.

  “Destination?” he asks, taking my papers.

  I swallow. “Paris,” I say. “To see my brother.”

  He looks over the first pass, mine, and then someone begins yelling behind him. Both our heads jerk at the sound. The man who was pulled from his car is down on his knees and the woman is weeping. Already that same fury is coming over me. If I didn’t have to protect these three children, I’d grab my gun and fire as many shots as I could.

  The soldier’s eyes return to my papers, and then he frowns. “There’s an error,” he says, in heavily accented French. “You will need to pull off the road.”