Across Eternity

by O'Roark, Elizabeth

  After a few minutes I hear someone coming through the woods and then Henri’s whistle, the sign that it’s safe. I throw the door open, but my smile fades. Edouard and Henri both look grim as they climb the steps.

  “What is it?” Marie asks, rushing to Edouard.

  He flinches. “The Germans are coming here today to repair the house. Genevieve couldn’t put them off. She’s got papers for Rachel and her two, plus a few of the others. She wants me to take them by foot to Versailles and catch a train to Limoges.”

  Her hand slides into his. “You? Why?”

  “Amelie and I are the only adults here who can be in the open safely,” he says, his head hanging. “But she’s nearly seven months pregnant. She can’t be asked to make that kind of journey on foot, and she could go into labor at any point—she can’t be left alone with five children.”

  “And the rest of us?” I ask.

  As Henri’s tongue darts out to tap his lip, I already know I’m going to dislike the answer. “She’s found another place for us. The driver is waiting. He’ll take you and Marie and the youngest of the children, then come back for the rest of us.”

  I think of our daughter saying Henri was the one who fought all the Nazis. “I think we should stay together.”

  He frowns, stepping closer to twine his fingers through mine. “It’s not possible. There’s not enough space. I promise you I’ll be there tonight.” He laughs, almost to himself. “That wasn’t the part I thought you’d object to.”

  “What did you think I’d object to?”

  “We’re staying in her home. In Paris.”

  I freeze, searching his face for some sign this is a joke. It doesn’t appear to be. “She wants us to stay in the house next door to a German officer—a house where she entertains Nazis day and night?” I ask. “That’s insane.”

  He sighs. “Perhaps. But her home is unlikely to be searched, if nothing else. Once the rest of us have papers, we’ll join Edouard in Limoges.”

  It sounds farfetched, impossible. I worry I’ll look back one day and realize it was.

  * * *

  After an emotional goodbye, Marie and I set out for Paris, along with Charlotte, Lucien, Cecelia and Jacques, a near-silent five-year-old.

  The journey is tense—only I can ride safely in the front of the truck while the others hide behind boxes in back—but our arrival is scarier. Though we pull into the alley behind the house—the servants’ entrance—I can see at least six German soldiers patrolling next door. I’m sent inside and up the back stairs to the attic with Cecelia in my arms. The room is full of old furniture and paintings and covered in a one-inch thick layer of dust.

  The driver and another staff member follow, carrying the children—and Marie—inside boxes. Lucien laughs as he emerges. “That was fun,” he tells me, wrapping his arms around my neck as I lift him out. No one else laughs, not even Charlotte, who clings to me afterward. She’s old enough, now, to understand the danger we’re in.

  I spend the next few hours trying to keep the children occupied and relatively quiet, waiting for Henri to come. He arrives just after dinner, pulling me against his chest and holding me tight.

  “Ahem,” says a voice behind him and we both turn to find a woman who must be Genevieve.

  She’s middle-aged and pretty, wearing a midnight-blue ballgown that looks like lingerie, her hair perfectly coiffed. “Sorry to break up the reunion,” she says, “but I’m about to entertain fifty German soldiers so this is the time. I’m working on getting papers for you but they won’t be ready until the end of the week. I understand you,” she says, turning to me, “have a good passport. I’ll need you to run to the forger’s location to check on the papers in a few days.”

  Henri’s mouth opens to object and I step on his foot. Pregnant or not, I’m the one who’s best positioned to take on a dangerous job right now.

  “I know it’s not ideal,” Genevieve concludes, “but you’re safe here. Just try not to make too much noise.”

  And with that, she’s gone, and we set about learning how to keep eight children quiet.

  * * *

  The hours in the attic pass slowly. The tension is constant, given the steady stream of German soldiers through the rooms below. The heat would be brutal were it not for the fans and the flow of air through the dormer windows. Food is brought up the back staircase once or twice a day by a maid who seems scared to even look at us, as if our tenuous situation might catch. On the third day she signals to me to follow her, and then downstairs gives me a scrap of paper with an address only a few blocks away.

  “Tell them you’re there to pick up the cigars for Herman Gunter. Do not return directly to the house, but wander through the city a bit and go into other shops until you’re certain you weren’t followed.”

  I find the building with relative ease—it really is a cigar shop, and I wonder if perhaps I’m just running errands for Genevieve instead of picking up papers.

  “I’m here for the cigars ordered by Herman Gunter,” I tell the man behind the counter.

  He looks at me and nods, going to the back and returning with a cigar box in a bag. I take it from him, and walk to a bookseller’s at the street’s end, standing outside in the heat while I ensure I haven’t been followed. I thumb through Les Fleurs du Mal by Charles Baudelaire. I remember finding it on Henri’s nightstand that day, so long ago, when I snuck into his room. I called it curiosity back then, my desire to sneak through his things, but it was lust...something I’d had no experience with until him. Now, of course, there’s love as well, but at seven months pregnant I’m finding that lust has taken top billing, oddly enough. I pray our papers come through soon. We could use some privacy.

  I close the book and am about to put it back when I sense I’m being watched. I raise my head slowly as the book falls from my hands.

  She’s here.

  The time traveler from 1989. She is standing just across the street and looks different in clothes from this era and with her hair pinned back, but I’m certain it’s her. There’s that same malevolence on her face as she watches me.

  She blends into the crowd and I turn on my heel, fleeing toward Genevieve’s, toward safety. I’ve run three blocks before I realize that if she can time travel, she can follow me on foot. All she’d need to do is return to the bookstore and follow my tracks—which means the only way I can prevent her from finding us is if I time travel myself, except if I do so, I’ll lose everything I’m wearing and everything I’m carrying...namely, the documents in the cigar box. I turn, rushing back to the bookseller’s, and shove the papers into a copy of Madame Bovary. Once they’re secure, I head toward Genevieve’s, stopping in the alley closest to her house.

  Despite my aunt’s spark, I’m still not good at landing in different places. I very well might arrive back in this alley, which opens me up to a wealth of other problems. There’s no time in which a naked, pregnant female can walk about without attraction attention. I take a deep breath and then focus hard on the Genevieve’s attic, on the dust motes floating in sunlight and Henri’s worried face as he awaits my return. I land gracelessly on the floor, relieved to see my family’s shocked heads jerk toward the sound.

  Henri grabs a blanket and rushes over to cover me. “Are you alright?”

  “I saw her,” I gasp. “The time traveler who was watching me in 1989. I saw her just now.”

  “Are you sure she’s bad?” he asks. “Maybe she’s just a family member? Another granddaughter of Katrin’s?”

  I glance from him to Marie, my heart beating hard. The fear in her eyes reflects my own. It will sound paranoid, voicing my thoughts, but I know what’s happening is precisely the worst-case scenario Marie once suggested could occur: this woman is working her way backward, looking for the right time to strike.

  And I’m worried she’s found it.

  “I’m sure she was bad, Henri,” I whisper. “I’m sure.”

  50

  SARAH

  Genevieve se
nds a maid to retrieve the papers from Madame Bovary. She’s angry at me for leaving them behind, and since I can’t tell her that I time travel, I have to let her remain so. “Don’t ask my staff to save your hide if you won’t save your own,” she says to me. “From now on, you get those papers yourself or you don’t get them at all.”

  The next day, four of the children leave for Limoges, where Edouard waits. Marie watches them longingly, wishing she were going with them. “It’ll happen eventually,” I tell her.

  “I hope so,” she says. She turns her worried eyes to me. “I don’t think you understand how bad this is.”

  I laugh. “Our situation? I assure you I do.” I’m now farther along than Yvette was when she gave birth to Cece and trapped in a swelteringly hot attic.

  “Not that. The time traveler,” she says. “It’s exactly as my mother described. If someone wants to stop you, she can just keep going backward. What if she sees the next set of forged passports? She won’t even need to try to find you here. She’ll just need to find out where Henri once lived. She could kill him back before the two of you ever met and none of your time with him would exist.”

  “Enough, Marie,” barks Henri. “She’s worried enough as it is. And if the time traveler wanted Amelie dead, she’d have done it already.”

  “Maybe she doesn’t want Amelie at all,” she argues. “Maybe she’s just waiting for the child to be born. And if she fails to steal her the first time, then she’ll just keep following us, or going back to do things differently.”

  Henri leans forward, nostrils flaring, jaw set hard. “You think I don’t see through this? You’re trying to scare her into going forward with the baby. It won’t work.”

  Tears spring to her eyes. “I’m not trying to scare her,” she says. “Or maybe I am, because I’m scared. Don’t you understand how much danger we’re all in? Not just us and our children, not just time travelers. Anyone alive is at risk.”

  “Easy for you to say when you lose absolutely nothing by having her leave,” Henri says, sliding his hand through mine as he rises from the table.

  “I’d be willing to lose everything in order to make it happen,” she whispers. “Just like our mother did.”

  “Another easy thing to say,” he replies, turning for the other side of the room with his arm wrapped around me tight, “since you’ll never be asked to do it.”

  That night, with the windows open, there’s just enough airflow to make the room bearable. I lie next to Henri, listening to the steady beat of his heart beneath my head. Memorizing it. Marie’s words from earlier today are still with me. As much as I want to resist them, I can’t deny what she’s saying. It isn’t about this single time traveler who’s potentially a threat—it’s about the threat inherent in our gift, how any of us could wreak havoc. I sense this evil in myself, but it’s kept in check by my love for Henri and the children. What if it wasn’t? How far would my desire to harm carry me? An innocent man has already died because of it. I’m certain there would be others.

  Henri’s lips press to the top of my head. “It’s going to be fine,” he says. “Marie is being paranoid. There’s no way this time traveler can trace us.”

  “She found me in 1941, when you’re the only person alive who knows my name here,” I whisper. “She may have resources we know nothing about.”

  “We’ve been through too much, survived too much,” he says. “I won’t give you up simply because my sister is panicking.”

  I think of all our time together—that blissful summer and fall before I was held captive, and all the time since. Marie is right...any time traveler could wipe it from existence if she wanted. I don’t want to die, but more than that, I don’t want what exists in the past to be stolen too. I don’t want it to happen to anyone.

  He tips my chin up to kiss me, his mouth firm, demanding. I respond, my need matching his and I can feel the vibration of his groan under my palm, now pressed to his chest. His hand slides from the curve of my waist, down to my hip, and as our kisses grow reckless and desperate, his inhales sharpen. He crushes the fabric of my nightgown in his fist, struggling to restrain himself.

  My thighs squeeze tight, as if it will dull the pain of wanting him like this. I allow my hand to graze over the front of his pants, relishing the hard outline of him there.

  “You’re soaked right now, aren’t you?” he whispers with a quiet groan. “Open your legs. I need to feel it.”

  I shouldn’t—it will only make the need worse—but my legs part and when his fingers slip between them, air hisses through my teeth.

  He rolls me to my back, pushing the nightgown around my waist. “I can’t wait anymore, Sarah.”

  I glance over at the children and Marie. “They could wake—we can’t.”

  “We can,” he says, climbing from the bed, “and we will.”

  He moves through the darkness, stacking chairs along the side of our bed, and then draping a blanket over them—creating a partition from the rest of the room, though one that could easily topple and wake the entire household.

  “If that falls, we’ll have an entire platoon of drunk Germans up here investigating,” I whisper.

  “Then,” he says, lying on the bed and pulling me above him, “let’s make sure it’s worthwhile.”

  * * *

  Genevieve appears in our rooms early the next day. I blush, grateful that Henri deconstructed the chair and blanket wall before anyone woke this morning. “I’m told the rest of the papers will be ready soon,” she says. “Two more days and you will all be free to go to Limoges.”

  Marie and I hug, as best we can with our burgeoning stomachs, and Henri presses his lips to my forehead. “Thank God,” he says. “It’s almost behind us.”

  I sit with a still-drowsy Cece in my lap while Henri plays jeu de barbichette—the slapping game—with Charlotte and Lucien.

  “You’re terrible,” I sigh. “They’ll get expelled if they try to play that in school.”

  Henri’s eyes crinkle at the corners. “Not in France they won’t. You’re too soft.”

  I laugh. “I think we both know that’s not true.”

  Marie is lying on her side, her feet next to my hip. “What do you think the home in Limoges is like?” she asks.

  Henri’s smile tips up at the corners. “I don’t care, as long as my wife and I no longer need to share a room with you all.”

  Marie laughs. “She’s over seven months pregnant, Henri. You’ll have no need for privacy for quite some time, believe me.”

  His eyes meet mine and hold. I bite down on a smile, just before a thud from the corner of the room draws my attention.

  A naked woman is on our floor, on her hands and knees.

  I freeze, some piece of me realizing what must be happening before I’ve put it all together.

  Me. The woman on the floor is me. And I’d only be jumping backward like this to give us a warning.

  “Go,” she says, her chest heaving. “Go now.”

  Henri rushes over and kneels in front of her. “What happened?”

  “Two days from now,” she says, looking at me. “You will go to the cigar shop and they’ll tell you your sister was already there, a girl with eyes just like yours.”

  All the breath leaves my chest and I lean forward, holding tight to Cecelia. “Eyes like mine means a time traveler,” I whisper.

  She nods. “She was demanding to know when the papers would be ready. She insisted that you were leaving the next morning—which means she knows ahead of you the day you will go.”

  The bedspread twists beneath my hand. “So we have to get out now, ahead of her.”

  She nods. “Even that may not be enough. There are a thousand ways she can find us.”

  Henri and I stare at each other. “We’ll just have to go without the papers,” he says.

  “But how?” I ask. “It’s daylight. You can’t be seen at all, and someone is going to ask for identification, whether we walk or take the train.”

 
; He drags a hand through his hair. “I’ll ask Genevieve for the truck,” he says. “Get the children ready.”

  He runs for the stairs and already the naked me on the floor is vanishing, which means we’ve changed how things go two days from now. I just hope we’re changing them for the better.

  Marie and I exchange a worried glance. “There’s something we’re missing,” she says. I’ve never seen her so pale and worried.

  “What do you mean?”

  “She can time travel, but we’re acting as if she’s human. It can’t be this easy to escape her.”

  I tug at my hair. “I know,” I whisper. Whatever is wrong with this plan, I’m too panicked right now to figure out what it is.

  I help the children with their shoes, while Marie stares sightlessly out the dormer windows. “Marie, can you pack our things?” I ask, but she doesn’t even seem to hear me. Genevieve and Henri come in just as we’re done. “The truck isn’t here,” he says. “It won’t return from Limoges until tomorrow.”

  I stare at him. “I don’t know what to do.”

  “Just wait,” says Genevieve. “I’m sure this—”

  That’s when we hear it—the pounding at the front door. Henri and I look at each other, and I see it then, the failure in our plan. “She’s always going to know when we leave,” I tell him, feeling faint suddenly and leaning against the wall for support. “She got her information from some point in the future, and each time we change the plan, the information she received, the dates that led her here...they change too. She knows it as soon as we do.”

  The pounding on the door increases.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about but they’re about to break down the door,” says Genevieve. “You need to get out of here. Leave through the basement. In the closet you’ll see what looks like an air vent. Behind it is a tunnel which will lead you across the street.”