We continue on until we hit a different small town—the type with a Main Street and tall white houses from early in the century.
“Can you turn?” she asks, pointing up ahead, and when I do, we reach a quiet, well-heeled subdivision where the houses back to trees. “Here,” she whispers. “It’s here.”
There’s a certainty to her voice that brings goose bumps to the surface of my skin.
“There isn’t anything to see here, honey,” I tell her, pulling over to the curb. “These are private homes.”
Just then, two shirtless little boys about her age come running around the side of the house, chasing each other. Quinn watches them intently for a moment and then takes off her seat belt. “I’ll be right back.”
I watch, dumbfounded, as she climbs from the car and walks to them. She’s a quiet child, normally. Reserved. I’ve never seen her do anything like this before. The boys—twins, nearly identical but not quite—suddenly stop whatever they’re doing and stare as she approaches.
Through the open window, I hear her speak to them for the first time.
“Hi,” she says. “I’m going to be your neighbor.”
I open my mouth to correct her, and then...I don’t. There’s something happening here and I’m not at the heart of it—she and these two boys are.
They both stare at her for a moment and then one of them frowns. “Well, you can’t come in our treehouse,” he says. “No girls allowed.”
But the other one watches her, his head tilted as if considering what she’s said, weighing it, and then shrugs. “I’ll let you in,” he says.
She looks at him for a long moment, so long that it’s awkward, but he’s watching her too. I get a chill up my spine. “I have to go now,” she says. She sounds wistful. “But my name is Quinn.”
“I’m Nick,” the boy replies.
I glance at the mailbox. Reilly, it says.
Like Luna Reilly, the time traveler who tried to fight off Coron in 1918 and died for it.
My hands grip the steering wheel. I want to tell myself it isn’t possible. But as I look at the two of them there, my daughter and this little boy, so spellbound by each other, I know what I’m seeing. Two of the first families in my daughter, and—I am guessing—the other two in him.
Four pieces of the puzzle, in the same place at last.
53
SARAH
There were no homes for sale, but with enough money almost anything can be purchased, and we move into a house a few doors down from the Reillys one month later.
Our lives change immediately—Quinn’s life, most of all. Until now, she was a tiny city dweller, and our days were spent in galleries and parks, with Cecelia’s bodyguards lurking discreetly behind. Now, she is a small wild thing with bruised shins and dirty feet, gone from sunup to dusk. Always off with the Reilly boys. She likes them both, but it’s Nick she’s drawn to, Nick she prattles on about as we eat dinner.
“Nick’s dad is a doctor,” she says one night, climbing into the tub. I’ve avoided the parents as much as possible, and I do my best to avoid the boys as well. It’s easier not to get close to people.
“Hmmm,” I say absent-mindedly, filling a cup with clean water to wash her thick, unruly hair. Henri’s hair, though long and lit with gold from these days out in the sun.
“What was my dad?” she asks.
My heart clenches. It’s been five years. Is there ever going to be a time when the mention of him, the memory of him, doesn’t ache the way it does? “He was a soldier,” I reply. “He died in the war. I told you that.”
“But what else was he?” she persists.
“He wanted to be an architect. And he was someone who loved you long before you were born.”
“I wish I could see him,” she says. “I wouldn’t even talk to him. I just want to see him.”
I close my eyes. The mother in me wants to forbid that trip she’ll take in a few years, but doing so could change things. And aside from the day I lost him, I wouldn’t give up a single piece of what we had, exactly as it was.
“Yes,” I say simply. “I wish you could too.”
* * *
Quinn’s gifts begin to unfold, as I knew they would. She has Marie’s ability to travel anywhere, anytime, with ease, and she has my ability to be in two places at once. At first, I’m constantly having to cover her tracks, changing the past so no one remembers the many times she accidentally disappeared in public. Eventually, I pull her out of school and teach her myself, waiting until she can control her gift on her own.
One afternoon she comes home and tells me she accidentally disappeared in front of Nick. I fix it, as I often do, after she goes to sleep. Changing her past means it no longer exists. Nick isn’t supposed to recall anything about it, and neither is she. The problem is...they do.
“Nick doesn’t remember seeing me time travel yesterday,” she says the next night over dinner. “But he says he dreamed he saw me disappear.”
The fork falls from my hand.
“Do you remember it?” I ask.
She nods. “I remember it both ways,” she says. “I always do, if Nick was there.”
I slowly breathe out. Some piece of her is holding on to a piece of him, even when it no longer exists. I don’t understand the import of it, however, until a few months later.
It’s a Saturday, and Quinn’s just run off to the treehouse. I watch as she goes and walk back inside to find two naked little girls sitting on my kitchen floor. One blonde, one brunette. Time travelers, both of them.
For a moment I’m so astonished I can only stare. They are far too young to have that kind of ability—younger even than Quinn when she followed me and Henri.
“Who are you?” There’s something familiar about them both, though I can’t place it.
They glance at each other, suddenly uncertain. “We wanted to see our mom,” the brunette says. “And to meet you.”
I am obviously not their mom, so they must mean...Quinn. And I can see her in their faces. For a moment I am thrilled, and then I remember something else...one of those things about my kind I’d nearly forgotten, something I never dreamed would be an issue: the rule of threes, which ensures that only three time travelers can exist in one family line.
It means one of us must die.
And I’m the one they’re here to meet, so I suppose I know who that is.
I press my hand to my heart, feeling an ache that is now familiar. Usually, it’s over the losses in my past. This time, it’s over the loss in my future. I wanted to be there for Quinn as her future unfolds and I won’t be. I won’t live to see her have these two little girls, or to become a part of their lives. I won’t be around to protect them all.
I force a smile. “I suppose we haven’t met before. What are your names?”
“I’m Amelie Rose Reilly,” says the brunette carefully, in that formal way small children sometimes do.
“We call her Milly,” adds the blonde. “And I’m Luna.”
I stare at them for a moment. It should have been obvious to me from the start, what I’ve been seeing in their faces, the thing I couldn’t identify. It’s Nick. In their smiles, in the blonde’s coloring. Three of the first families are accounted for—Reilly, Durand and Eber—and I’m sure the fourth is there too.
These two girls are the circle of light, from the prophecy. I don’t know what it means, but I know I’m in the presence of it.
Tears sting my eyes. “And how did you manage to land here together like this?”
They both shrug. “We can always find each other,” explains Luna.
Like Quinn and Nick’s ability to remember each other, no matter what I erase, I think.
I ask them about their lives, and they detail a perfectly normal childhood, aside from the time travel. They go to school and they play. There’s a pool in their yard and their father has taught them to swim. They tell me their favorite subjects, the teachers they like and the teachers they hate.
“And
grandpa taught us jeu de barbichette,” offers Milly. “But he said you wouldn’t like that so we shouldn’t tell you.”
My mouth falls open. “Your grandfather?” I ask, my voice cracking. They must mean Henri. Who else would have taught them the game? Who else would have told them I hated it?
For a moment I merely envy them—what I wouldn’t give to a spend an hour in his company, something I never do since it could rewrite our past. Then I realize the danger they could be placing all of us in with those visits. Not simply because of the time they’re going to, but because any information they give him could change everything that takes place afterward. “Girls, does your mother know you’re going back that far? It could be very, very dangerous.”
“We don’t go backward to see grandpa,” says Milly. “Well, maybe we do?”
She turns to Luna, who shrugs. “We see him on the island. Time is different there.”
“You’ll see him there too,” adds Milly. “He told us you would.”
My skin feels stretched so tight over my bones that I’m worried I will split open entirely. “That’s not possible,” I whisper. “Your grandfather died in 1941.”
They look at each other again. “We should go,” says Luna.
Milly opens her mouth to argue and Luna yanks on her hand. They disappear before I can even open my mouth and I remain behind, staring in shock at the space where they just sat.
Is it possible? Could Henri actually still exist somewhere in the world, somewhere I could go without rewriting the past? It must be what Cecelia meant when she said our story wasn’t over.
I curl up on the floor, wanting it to be true so much I feel sick with hope, wanting it so much I think I’ll die a little if it winds up being false.
It’s late afternoon in France, Cecelia’s busiest time of the day, but she answers my call immediately.
“I met the twins,” I tell her. “You knew, right? This is what you meant when you said our story wasn’t over?”
“Yes,” she says. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you more. I just thought it should all happen as it was meant to.”
It was probably the right decision, but now that I know I can’t help but push for more. “Do you know anything else?” I ask, gripping the phone tight. “Do you know where the island is?” I could go there. I’ll go tonight and bring Quinn. I don’t care where we have to go or what we need to do to get there.
“I’ve spent a small fortune trying to find the island, to no avail,” she admits. “Which isn’t to say it doesn’t exist. There are thousands of undiscovered islands on the planet. It seems as if it’s a place you can only reach in their time. That’s what you’ll come to believe, after the twins visit you again.”
“But why only in their time? Why not now?”
“You tell me,” she says. “These are your people and your legends. You tell me.”
I think about the story, the very little I know about the island and what lies ahead for it. The four families can’t come home, the legend says, until they are united once more. United once more in the twins, who don’t yet exist.
“Maybe the island can’t exist, at least for us, until the twins do,” I venture. My eyes close and I sink into a seat, burying my head in my hands. “But if the island won’t exist until they’re born, and I’m going to die when they’re born...how am I going to see him?”
“Maybe you don’t actually die,” Cecelia suggests softly. “Maybe you just go there instead.”
The possibility of it makes my heart soar—I miss Henri every minute of every day, and there’s an emptiness inside me that no one else could fill—but it breaks me at the same time. “I’ll die when they’re born. I’m okay with that but...” My voice rasps. I always thought I’d be there to protect my daughter, that she’d always be able to lean on me. “Do you know how long I’ll have with Quinn? Did I stop going back to see you at a certain point?”
She hesitates. For a moment I think she’s not going to tell me, and then she does. “Yes, your visits stopped,” she says. “She and Nick...you’ve already seen it yourself. They’ll be young when they fall in love, and they’ll be young when the twins are born.”
“I don’t have that long with her, then,” I whisper.
“No parent ever has long enough,” she replies. “You just have to treasure each moment as it’s handed to you.”
I’m not the only one who will suffer over this, though. Quinn’s going to have to live with the knowledge that the twins’ births killed me. “I wish there were another way. It’s so much to put on her when she’s already got the entire prophecy on her shoulders.”
“She’s a strong girl and she’ll be a strong woman, just like her mother. I think you were chosen for a reason—because you’ll do whatever is required to make the world a safer place, through the twins.”
I close my eyes, knowing she’s right. Until the end comes, I will be happy for each moment I get. And I’ll do everything I must, no matter how much it pains me, to make the prophecy come to fruition. For everyone who’s died trying to make it come true. Henri, most of all.
* * *
Quinn returns from another day with Nick, lit through with a small, wild joy, a bright light only he brings out in her. She climbs into my lap, her head resting against my chest, and my throat squeezes tight. This time with her is more fleeting than either of us can realize, but I’m only losing what every mother does, eventually. There will always come a day when your child is too big to be held in your arms, when she no longer wants to sit in your lap or curl up against you at night. A day when she leaves home, when she creates her own family, when you are separated by death.
We all, in the end, have to give up the things we love, and I am no exception.
Even so, I would not change a thing.
54
HENRI
1941
The Germans who rushed into Genevieve’s basement are dead, but I know I don’t have long either. I’m weak, not thinking clearly, but if there’s any way to reach Sarah, I have to try. I crawl into the tunnel, hoping to follow her and the children to the Pont de l’Alma, but the effort takes the last of my strength. My eyes close and I picture her—my sweet little thief. She became a lion, in the end. She’ll do whatever is necessary to keep our daughter safe.
Time passes. I’m sweating and feverish. I dream that I’m in the vineyard, and Sarah is walking toward me, lush and smiling, wearing the white dress with the small roses. The world is green and new, and in my wife I see everything good, everything I want in the world. “Take off the dress, Sarah,” I whisper when I reach her, and she laughs, batting my hands away.
“Madame Beauvoir is here,” she says. “She’ll see us.”
“Good,” I reply, pulling the dress off her shoulders, “maybe she’ll stop visiting so often.”
She begins pulling me, farther into the fields where we won’t be seen. The pain I felt before is ebbing and in its place is a drowsy sort of contentment. If she is leading me to heaven, I’m ready to follow.
* * *
A hand on my shoulder rouses me from the dream, and when my eyes blink open, Sarah is beside me. The pain in my back and chest has spread, has begun to fill me, and I don’t think I have long. “You need to go,” I whisper. “You can’t be here now.” I’m having a hard time gritting out the words.
“It’s fine,” she says, laying her head on my chest. She’s shivering with cold, and her voice is faint. “More than twenty years have passed, Henri. The children are grown, and happy. It will all happen as it’s supposed to now.”
She feels the same and in the dim light she looks the same, but slowly, I begin to understand. “You came back to die with me.”
“I came back to go on to the next place with you,” she says, her voice barely above a whisper. “But even if there isn’t one, it’s enough, the time we had. You and our family—they were worth all of it.”
My lips press to her head. She releases a single, long breath, and then she is still.
I hold her against me. “Take me with you, Sarah,” I whisper. “Wherever it is you’ve gone.”
My eyes shut and the pain leaves as I sink somewhere heavy and dreamless. But Sarah is tucked against my chest. Our children are safe and we are together.
She’s right. It’s enough.
* * *
I wake slowly, eyes blinking against the bright sun. I see a small stone house and a barn, similar to ours but not quite the same, surrounded by a vineyard, one that’s flourishing in the summer air. For a moment I think I’m back in Saint Antoine—that I’ve fallen asleep in the orchard as I occasionally did—until I look in the distance, where I see a tall white steeple and the bright, clear blue of the sea.
I’m on an island. And I think of it then, my mother’s stories about the mythical island where we’d all be reunited one day. I mostly thought it was a fairy tale...but was it?
Wherever I am, though, I don’t want to be here without my wife.
I push off the ground, realizing the pain in my back, in my chest…is gone, as if it never was. I lift my shirt. There are no wounds from the bullets that entered my chest, no scar from the knife that cut me when I was held captive, but the marks of my childhood remain—a small white line on my thumb from an accident with a saw, a burn mark on my inner wrist.
It’s not as if I’ve died and been made perfect. It’s as if I’ve simply returned to some earlier time.
“Sarah?” I call, starting toward the small stone house. Something crashes inside the barn. A sound much like the one Sarah made when she first came to us.
I run toward it this time, and enter to find Sarah standing before me, naked and confused. She looks exactly as she did that first day, but when her eyes raise to mine, I see everything I’d hoped to in her face. Love and the start of a joy she’s terrified to let herself feel.
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