Across Eternity

by O'Roark, Elizabeth

  “And from there?” I ask.

  She meets my gaze, her face bleak. “From there you run.”

  She heads for the stairs, but Henri, Marie and I remain absolutely still, stunned speechless. Asking us to crawl out a manhole and run with the children in the middle of the day is tantamount to suicide. We need a car or we’ll never make it. Marie presses her hands to her stomach and swallows hard.

  “I can do it,” she whispers with tears in her eyes. “I’ll get us the truck. Meet me at the Pont de l’Alma in five minutes.”

  Before I can ask what she means, her clothes fall to the ground and she is gone.

  “No,” I whisper after her. I’m too late. I doubted her, all those times she insisted she would give up everything on behalf of the prophecy, but she may have done just that. If she isn’t carrying a time traveler, she won’t be pregnant when we see her next.

  “Sarah,” Henri says, putting two guns in his waistband. “We need to go.”

  He sweeps Lucien up in one arm and Cece in the other and heads for the stairs. Charlotte and I are at his heels.

  We reach the basement just as the door upstairs opens and the floor above us echoes with the sound of stomping boots. I stand frozen, listening.

  We cannot beat her. If there was time, I could go find out how she knows about us and perhaps stop her. But there’s no way I can do that now.

  And this is why the prophecy matters, why so many people were willing to die for it—because no matter what we do here and now, she can keep going back, tracing us through previous weeks and years to catch us unaware. We escape today and eventually she’ll show up somewhere in our past—Nanterre or even Saint Antoine, that first blissful summer with Henri—and destroy us.

  This is why my daughter needs to exist. So she can bring into the world something with the power to stop all of it. Until it happens, we are endlessly vulnerable.

  “I have to kill her,” I tell him.

  He shakes his head. “No, just go. Get into the tunnel. I’ll hold them off until you’re gone.”

  “It won’t matter, Henri!” I cry. “Listen to me! Until she’s dead she’ll just keep going backward to find us.”

  He holds my face. “There’s not time for that right now,” he says. “Just get ahead of her. And if that fails, save yourself. Save our daughter.” His lips press to mine. “This isn’t the time for weakness, little thief. You were chosen to bring her into the world for a reason. Show the universe it hasn’t made a bad choice.”

  “Henri—” I cry, wanting to beg him to consider any other way.

  He stops me, kissing me hard, one last time. “I love you,” he says. “Wherever the other side is, I’ll be waiting for you there.” He lifts me into the tunnel and hands me Cece.

  I allow myself a single, final moment to take in his face, and he holds my gaze until I go, scooting backward through the tunnel as fast as I can. I push up the manhole cover and climb out, hearing the sound of gunfire as I lean down to pull the children to me. Henri, alone, is facing whatever is behind us, and I have no way to help him—no weapon, no time. I could jump back a day and try to kill the time traveler responsible for all this, but the children would be dead before I’d succeeded.

  “Take Lucien’s hand,” I tell Charlotte, with tears running down my face. I lift Cece in my arms and we begin to run, cutting through alleyways toward the Seine.

  It’s all futile, though. I don’t know what the time traveler is after, but if she doesn’t get it, she will just go back and do things differently. She’s been tracing me, or us, for years, waiting for the right moment to strike, and now that she’s found it she isn’t going to give up. She’ll just send the police to Genevieve’s sooner. She can go back endlessly, and one of those times, she’ll succeed.

  It’s still early, and only one truck sits down at Pont de l’Alma—a fish truck. I’m not sure if it’s the truck Marie promised or some fisherman loading up his daily catch, but I run toward it anyway.

  Edouard and Marie step out, and my stomach drops.

  Marie is no longer pregnant.

  “I’m sorry,” I whisper. She shakes her head, trying not to cry, and takes Cece from me, while Edouard lifts Lucien into the back of the truck and climbs in after him.

  I hug Charlotte tight and bury my head in her hair. “I have to go back to take care of some things. I’ll be with you as soon as I can.”

  “Please, Mama,” she begs, clinging to me. “You said you wouldn’t leave. Let me stay with you!”

  “I know,” I say, choking on a sob. “But first I need to make sure things are safe for us, and I need you to be brave.”

  She clings harder. “I don’t want you to go,” she weeps. “I don’t want you to go back there.”

  It all feels wrong. It feels wrong that I’m breaking my promise. It feels wrong that I am asking so much of her when she’s so small. “Charlotte, I—”

  Suddenly, a shot is fired. It pings off the back of the truck and ricochets into the grass. My head jerks upward. Soldiers are firing on us from the bridge, and the time traveler stands on the hillside, watching it unfold. I swing my back to them, protecting Charlotte. “Get in the truck!” I scream, trying to pull her hands off me. She is crying, clinging hard as if she can protect me. I feel fire in my shoulder, a pain so searing I nearly drop her.

  Her grip loosens and I thrust her toward the back of the truck, into Edouard’s arms. That’s when I realize she’s no longer fighting, no longer moving. Her eyes are open, sightless, her dress soaked in blood. A small hole in the center of her chest where the bullet entered, the same bullet that went through my shoulder.

  No.

  I stare at the hole, at her empty eyes.

  I understand in a second’s time and yet I understand nothing. It’s Edouard who recovers first, who yanks me into the truck before I’m shot again. There’s a sharp pain in my abdomen but I ignore it.

  “No,” I whisper to him, looking at Charlotte. “No, no. We can fix it!”

  Edouard lifts my face. “You can’t fix this, Amelie. I’m sorry.”

  Cece and Lucien are weeping, bullets are flying at the truck, and Charlotte—my sweet Charlotte who wanted to marry Daniel and live in Nanterre forever—is dead.

  Shock and grief seem to empty me. Marie begins driving and I can only stare at my little girl, desperately trying to come up with a way to undo this. I begin shaking her, as if it’s a sleepy morning in Nanterre and she is refusing to wake. Edouard grabs my shoulders. “Amelie, she’s gone,” he says. “You need to pull it together.”

  I look at him and hear his words, finally. And my grief is replaced by rage. Not clear and cold and rational the way it’s been in the past. This time I want to burn the world down. I want to kill those soldiers and the time traveler and everyone they’ve ever loved.

  Henri wanted so much for me to put this behind us. But suddenly I know, in a way I never did before, that I am meant to feel this way. That I am meant to be ruthless, and to stop at nothing to keep the child inside me safe.

  And I will start with the time traveler who made all this happen.

  I picture her, standing on the hillside, and I land behind her.

  There’s nothing dramatic about it. I don’t give her a speech about how she needs to pay for what she’s done, and I don’t ask her what she was after—warning her of my presence in any way will just provide her time to escape.

  My arm goes around her neck and then, with the other hand, I snap it, just the way I was trained. She crumples to the ground. There’s no victory in it. She’s just another casualty, one of many who will die to bring the prophecy to fruition.

  The soldiers firing at the truck turn their guns on me, but I’m already time traveling away, picturing the manhole cover by Genevieve’s as hard as I can.

  I land, but another of those pains seizes my stomach and sends me to my knees, gasping. It makes the bullet wound in my shoulder seem minimal by contrast. A contraction, I suddenly realize. I should jump to
my own time now, but there’s a chance Henri’s not dead. If he still lives, I can fix this. I can jump back to kill the time traveler sooner, before she put this plan in motion.

  I begin to climb through the tunnel. My eyes adjust to the dim light—and I see a body at the other end. I crawl to it, knowing what I will find.

  Henri.

  His eyes are closed, and he looks boyish with those long lashes sweeping his cheeks, like a child who snuck off somewhere and fell asleep along the way. I press my lips to his cheek. His skin is cold, and I know that he is gone. I know it, and yet I remain beside him, trying to find an answer.

  “Henri,” I cry. “Come back. Just come back.”

  Another contraction hits, and my body jerks in response. I’m fading, being pulled to my own time whether I want to go or not.

  I fight it for only a moment. It’s what Henri wanted. It’s what I already knew I had to do. I press my lips to Henri’s, one last time.

  And then I’m gone.

  51

  SARAH

  I land not in the tunnel, but on Genevieve’s basement floor, mid-contraction and in too much pain to push myself up, though I know this home must belong to someone else by now. I hear footsteps, running, and in a moment there’s a hand in mine.

  Cecelia—adult Cecelia—is beside me. “I’m here,” she says. “You won’t have to do it alone this time.”

  The contraction ends and I sit up, pressing my hands to my face, weeping. “Henri and Charlotte—”

  Her hand is on my back. “I know.”

  I only want to go back to him and yet I’d be refusing to give him the one thing he asked of me. My breaths are huge and gasping and painful, wrenched from my lungs. Another contraction comes and I can barely tell one kind of pain from the other.

  “You need to focus now,” Cecelia whispers. “You’re about to bring my sister into the world.”

  She’s right. I know she’s right, but I don’t think I can go through life without him and without my children. I just want to return to Nanterre, to a time when we were happy, and stay as long as I can.

  And if that’s not possible, I just want it all to end.

  I look toward the tunnel, to the place where I just left Henri.

  “He isn’t there, Sarah,” she says softly.

  A sob wracks my chest. “Where is he? Where was he buried?”

  She squeezes my hand. “All is not lost, and all is not as it seems. There are things that lie ahead which even you can’t imagine, and I think your story with my father isn’t over. You will come to believe this yourself, in time.”

  “What do you mean?” I ask. “Is he not dead? If he’s not dead I can just go back. I can kill the time traveler before she did all this and—”

  “It’s too late for that,” she says. “But I think it best that you discover the rest as it unfolds. You want the future ahead of you, I promise, and it’s time for it to begin. Are you ready?”

  I think of Henri. This isn’t the time for weakness, little thief, he said. You were chosen to bring her into the world for a reason. Show the universe it hasn’t made a bad choice.

  Our wedding day seems like so long ago, but I remember the moment when I entered the church. I was glad then for all the ways we’d suffered because it brought us to where we were. Perhaps, one day, I’ll be glad for this too.

  * * *

  Henri’s daughter is born an hour after I arrive in 1991.

  She is tiny and perfectly formed, long fingers and a tiny pursed mouth that reminds me so much of her father that I burst into tears at the sight of her. I miss him. It’s only been minutes and I miss him, and I don’t know how anyone can expect me to go through the rest of my life feeling this way.

  “Was it true?” I ask Cecelia, gazing at my daughter. “That things aren’t what they seem? That my story with Henri isn’t over?”

  She smiles. “Do you think I’d lie about something like that?”

  “What about Charlotte?” I hate it, that pathetic, hopeful note in my voice.

  Cecelia’s smile fades. “She’s buried in the Loire Valley. A beautiful spot on a hillside, beneath a large oak, near where Lucien and I grew up.”

  I pull the baby closer to my chest as the tears stream down my face. I’ve lost so much. Charlotte. Henri. Even Cece and Lucien. I can visit them, but they will no longer be mine. All I have left is this little girl in my arms, and something surges in my blood, a new kind of protectiveness, the sort that borders on insanity.

  Anything that threatens her, anything that stands in her way…I will destroy it without a moment’s thought. From now on, there is nothing to live for but her, and I will exist only to keep her safe.

  52

  SARAH

  1995

  Quinn sits on the floor of Cecelia’s library, the very image of her father, with a book spread open in front of her. She’s only five but has been reading for over a year, one of many ways she stands out. There will be more of them soon, once she comes into her power.

  I know the time traveler responsible for Henri’s and Charlotte’s deaths is gone, but I still picture her on every corner, waiting to steal Quinn from me. I saw her here once, watching Quinn and me as we walked down to the Seine from Cecelia’s home. She posed no threat—the visit must have occurred before she died. My life is moving forward, but she seems to be working backward from some point in the future, and the fact that she never attacked Quinn or myself tells me it was someone else she was after, that day in 1941. I can’t ask her since it might change the past, not that she’d tell me anyway. I suppose it’s a mystery for my daughter or her children to solve in the future. One of many.

  I tap on the frame of the door to get Quinn’s attention. “I heard my little girl was in here,” I say as she looks up, “but I guess I’ll keep looking. I only see a big girl in this room.”

  Her face breaks into a wide smile and she runs to me, circling my legs with her small arms. “I missed you,” she says earnestly, and my heart squeezes tight with pain and joy at once. I was gone for three weeks this time, visiting Edouard, Marie, Lucien and Cece back in the 1940s as I do each summer. Marie and Edouard are their parents now. I’m glad for it, as they had no more children, yet it hurts all the same. Cecelia and I remain close, and she is thrilled by my visits to her childhood, but Lucien is already changing from a rambunctious boy to the serious young man he’ll become, and he has little time for a doting American aunt.

  My entire beautiful past—it’s like a splinter in my heart that won’t budge.

  “You’ve gotten taller,” I say, lifting her into my arms. “Stop growing so fast.”

  Her arms tighten around my neck into the fiercest hug, and then she is scrambling back to the floor to show me the book she’s been reading. She holds up a picture of a home—no, not a picture: an architectural rendering. That ever-present sorrow climbs into my throat. I wish Henri was here. I wish he could see how like him she is.

  “It’s Monticello,” she says. “Thomas Jefferson designed it himself. Can we go?”

  I blink back tears. “You want to go all the way to the states to see a house? We live in a city full of magnificent architecture.”

  Her gaze drops down to the book as if she’s confused. “I...do,” she says. “I don’t know why. We’re just supposed to go.”

  There’s something in the way she says those words—we’re just supposed to go—that makes the hair on my arms stand on end. There are moments when it seems as if she’s being directed by a force outside herself, and this is one of them. I’m terrified of the direction that force is sending her, even when I know I should yield to it.

  I swallow and force a smile. “Then I guess I’d better start planning a trip.”

  That night I tell Cecelia about Quinn’s request, searching her face. She knows where my life is headed, through the tidbits I shared going back to visit her as she grew up. “Quinn wants to go to Virginia,” I say. “We’re going to stay, aren’t we? Something happens there that
convinces us to stay.”

  She gives a small laugh. “No matter how many years you know me, you still try to get me to reveal your future.”

  “My own personal palm reader,” I reply with a smile of my own, “but one who refuses to tell me anything of import.”

  “When it matters, I’ll tell you,” she replies.

  “So you’re saying this doesn’t matter?”

  She shakes her head. “No. I think it probably matters most. But I already know you’re going to do the right thing.”

  * * *

  Two weeks later we are driving into the mountains of Virginia, heading to Monticello. It’s August, searingly hot, but Quinn wants the windows down and rides with her eyes glued to the landscape, quiet and intense. She reminds me of an animal in the wild—the way it goes alert the moment it senses something nearby.

  She nods when I ask if she’s okay but doesn’t even look at me as she continues to stare, hands clasped tightly in her lap.

  My heart beats harder, scared of what it is she’s sensing. Cecelia told me, once upon a time, that I wouldn’t change this future that lies ahead of me if I could, but I still long for the husband and children I left behind. I pray that future she’s referencing isn’t any sadder than it already is.

  “There’s something—” Quinn says, suddenly, pointing at an exit. “I want to go there.”

  It’s just a generic country road that appears to lead to nothing, and we’ve got a full agenda of gallery visits before we head to Pennsylvania to see my brother Steven and his wife. Exploring country roads in the middle of nowhere is not on the list.

  “Honey, we’ll miss our tour if we stop now. Maybe we can stop on the way back to D.C.”

  “Please,” she begs. There’s a desperate note to her voice I’ve never heard before.

  Reluctantly, I turn off the highway, driving through a podunk town with no signs of life aside from a gas station that isn’t even open. But she is sitting up straight, as if sensing something spectacular up ahead, her gaze intent on the small houses we pass.