I pick up the framed photo of a very young Henri and Marie that sits on the side table and smile at Henri's chubby little cheeks and mischievous eyes.
"That’s Marie-Therese, who you claim to know, and my son, Henri, who is away at university now." She laughs almost to herself. "He would very much have enjoyed meeting you."
I seriously doubt that. Though I should probably just finish my tea and leave, I can’t help my own curiosity. "Where is he in school?" I ask.
"Oxford," she replies.
I blink. Oxford? Even back in 1935, it must have been an honor to be accepted there. So why did he leave? "Does he...does he like it there?"
She smiles, her suspicion of me lost in a cloud of adoration for her son. "He is in love with it, with all of it. My son was never cut out for a small life here with us, I'm afraid. The top student in the village.”
It’s almost the opposite of what he said the other day. I think of his youthful obsession with architecture, the fact that he was willing to run away from home just to see some architectural principle at play. How exactly did I convince myself he was just too provincial for life in a big city? That he preferred being a farmer? Something changed, and I wonder what it was.
“This is him now,” she says, reaching for another frame on the mantle and handing it to me. Henri grinning in rolled up shirt sleeves, a rugby ball tucked beneath his arm and other smiling boys around him. He looks so handsome and carefree, but the sepia of the photograph and the clothes remind me how long ago this all actually was. That Henri, in my time, is old. It’s hardly a revelation but it hits me now with a sharpness it didn’t before.
"You must miss him,” I say faintly. Weirdly, it feels as if I miss him. As if I miss this carefree boy in the photo, so different from the man I just saw in 1938. I can’t seem to take my eyes off the picture.
Her smile is fond and sad at once. "He has much greater dreams than a small farm, I'm afraid. His friends have already invited him to stay with them out in the Cotswolds next summer, and what can I say?” she asks with a shrug. "All you want as a parent is for your children to love their lives. He does, and if it means I see less of him it's a small price to pay."
It hits me at last: he didn’t return because he missed the farm, because he preferred home. He came back because his mother disappeared, and there was no one to protect Marie.
I look at this beautiful, beaming woman across from me and wish to God she hadn’t left. The odds that she’s still surviving somewhere are so slim, but I find myself praying for it anyway. If we could save her, Henri could have his life back, and so could Marie.
She's watching me carefully again. "Do you know my son?" she asks softly.
We are getting into dangerous territory. Telling her I know Henri would indicate that he and Marie-Therese are probably in the same place—which runs counter to what she will expect, given that she just told me she doesn’t think he’ll return home. But I don’t feel capable of telling an outright lie.
"Yes," I reply. "A little."
Her brow furrows. A single moment of uncertainty and worry. "He is well, where you're from?"
"Very."
She smiles and tips her head again. "And is he still very handsome?"
I’m willing to admit to myself that Henri is attractive, but saying it aloud is something else. I’m not sure why—I’ve told Mark a thousand times about my crush on Sean Connery. But that’s different. It’s not real. Which I suppose means my crush on Henri sort of…is.
"We should probably not speak too much of the future?" I suggest gently, and she nods in agreement, but worry creases her brow again.
She has guessed, or is at least wondering, if I'm describing a future in which she does not exist. She's asking about the son she adores and she wants to know that he's okay.
"He's the most handsome man I've ever laid eyes on," I tell her quietly, looking once more at his photo before I set it on the table.
When I glance up at her something has changed in her face—as if I just gave her the critical clue in a mystery she could not make sense of until now. She refills my tea. "You were asking about the circle of light,” she says. “What did you want to know?"
I blink in surprise. Two minutes ago she was politely asking me to leave, and just as suddenly she appears to have changed her mind. I lean forward, eager to get an answer before she rethinks the decision. “I’m trying to figure out why my aunt went after it and where she would have gone.”
She tsks. "Why she went after it? Because it’s what we all crave, of course. Surely your mother explained all this to you?”
"My mother can't time travel. And if she did know, she wouldn't tell me." I swirl my cup in my saucer. "She thinks time travel is a bit of a, um, curse.”
She gives me a sad smile, one that reminds me of Marie. "That must have been very hard for you," she says. “People can be very ignorant sometimes. If she were capable of it, she’d feel differently.”
I can’t say I agree. What good has time travel ever brought into my life? Could a few trips backward to warn myself about pop quizzes and a paper I was going to botch possibly be worth all the terrible things it’s been responsible for?
"I can do it, and it seems to have led to more bad than good for me."
She holds my gaze for a moment. "Without it, I'm not sure what we'd have done after the war. It's saved my life and my children's lives on more than one occasion. It’s how I was able to visit my husband during the war,” she adds with a small, wistful smile. “Which is the reason your friend Marie exists.”
I grin. Madame Durand time traveled to have sex with her husband during the war. Henri seems like the type who would hate knowing that. It’s going to be so tempting to let it slip.
“Anyway,” she continues, “you know the prophecy, I’m sure.”
I sip my tea. “Only the outlines.”
“In France there will be a hidden child born of the first family, conceived during a great war and born on the other side of it,” she recites. “In her our hope shall rest, for she will produce the circle of light, and within that circle, our past and present will be safe from those who would do us harm.”
Marie got most of it right, but she left something out: a product of the first families. I’m not sure who the first families are exactly, and I don’t dare draw her suspicion again by asking.
“None of us are certain what the circle of light is,” she continues. “To be honest, I always thought it would be a person. But there were reports of something that sounded like it just after the war—a mysterious golden circle people saw just behind Sacré-Coeur.”
My stomach sinks. The war ended in 1918. If that’s where she went, twenty years have passed. She’d have gotten home by now if she were going to.
“A mysterious golden circle doesn’t seem like much to go on,” I reply. “That could be anything.”
“It was all over the news. For weeks there was chaos in Paris—the city was flooded with visitors, entirely female. Clothing and food disappeared to such an extent that it became international news. And in Paris they began calling it le plus beau mois, the most beautiful month, because of the loveliness of the women. It's suspicious, do you not think?"
I sigh. It's very suspicious. An object straight out of a prophecy, and an influx of what very obviously sounds like time travelers coming to check it out. "And no one found it?"
"Not as far as we know," she says, her mouth tipping up at the corners. The way Henri smiles sometimes when he's trying not to. "Not yet."
Don’t go, I want to plead. Don’t do this. How could it possibly be worth what you’ll lose? "What would make anyone believe they could find it when no one else has succeeded?"
She smiles again. “Haven’t you ever heard the legend of King Arthur?” she asks. “Only the chosen one could remove the sword. Perhaps the circle of light is the same.”
There is something she is not telling me, but what is it? She clearly doesn’t realize there’s such a risk involved
in going back for this thing, but she isn’t a naïve woman. Why would she think she could do what no one else could? And why wait seventeen years if she thought she could?
“I’m surprised you didn’t go try to find the circle at the time,” I suggest.
She looks out the window, seeing nothing. “I was a widow with a newborn and a toddler. I was in no position to go anywhere. And there’d have been no point—it’s not as if I am the chosen one.”
It makes even less sense, then, why she’d be going to see it now. But I’m not here to understand it. I’m here to know where she’d have gone.
“So if I were to go looking for my aunt, where and when should I go?”
“Fall of 1918,” she says. “The circle is seen in the evening, in a small square called Parc de la Turlure. The war ended on November 11th, so the day after might be best.”
November 11th, the day before Marie’s birthday. It seems significant somehow. I let the facts rattle around in my head like spinning coins, waiting for them to fall. The dates. Madame Durand’s decision to go look for something she already knows isn’t for her. And the prophecy: in France, a hidden child. Hidden. It’s a word Henri has used multiple times, discussing Marie and their life on the farm.
Marie, who was conceived during the war, and born one day after it. For some reason, this has led Madame Durand to think Marie is the prophecy’s hidden child. And Henri thinks so as well.
I land in the barn no more gracefully than usual. It was only a few years but—perhaps because I'm still not in my own time—I’m not sure I have the energy to put on my clothes. I grab the blanket and wrap it around me, taking one step toward the house before I change my mind.
"Just for a few minutes," I say aloud, curling up in the straw. My words are slurred as if I'm drunk. I hear the sound of footsteps approaching but I'm too tired to open my eyes.
"Amelie," Henri says, his voice husky, concerned even. I force a single eye open. He is crouched beside me, and indeed looks very worried.
"Just need sleep," I slur. "Five more minutes."
"Ridiculous girl," he says with a soft laugh. A moment later I feel myself scooped up in his arms and carried. I'm more than half asleep, but some distant part of my brain registers everything. His smell: hay and sweat and soap. His warmth, his size, the bulge of his bicep beneath my head. How gentle he is when he lays me down on the mattress.
I want to tell him what happened. I want to tell him how proud his mother was of him, how she glowed at the very mention of his name, but my brain is short on words. "You went to Oxford," is all I can manage. He’s pulling the blanket over me, his face a mix of pleasure and sorrow.
"My mother was talking about me," he says, forcing a smile.
It's so unfair. She adored him and now she is gone. I can't understand why it causes this pain in my heart, why I ache so much more than I should for what he's lost.
I'm falling back into the darkness, drifting away from him, and I wish I could stay. "She loved you so much," I whisper.
I don't realize I'm crying until I feel his finger on my skin, brushing a tear away. "Yes, I know," he says with a quiet laugh. "It's only you who dislikes me."
I don't dislike you anymore, I think as I drift to sleep. I’m not sure I ever did.
When I wake, hours later, he is there, sitting in the chair by the bed with a book in hand.
I yawn, stretching like a kitten and begin to rise. "I'd be careful about that," Henri says with a brow raised. "You're naked under that blanket."
Oh, right.
I clutch the quilt to my neck and sit up. My clothes have been laid out for me on a chair, with my underthings sitting atop them. I flush.
His eyes track mine and he laughs. "Very pretty."
"If you are expecting me to act embarrassed you'll have a long wait. I'm not the one who entered a sleeping girl's room and sat there like a creep."
There’s an amused set to his mouth, but it fades quickly. "We need to speak...before you talk to Marie."
He rises and shuts the door behind him, sliding his chair next to my bed. "I need to know what my mother told you,” he says quietly.
“She told me all about you at Oxford,” I reply, watching his face. “You didn’t leave because school wasn’t for you. You weren’t even planning to come home for the summer because you loved it there so much.”
His eyes meet mine. “Someone needed to watch Marie. If she knew why I really came home she wouldn’t stand for it.”
“Except she’s an adult now,” I counter, “and could easily take care of herself, yet you stay.”
He gives an ambivalent shrug. “I’m used to how things are. Until she’s married, I’ll remain here.” He’s hoping that’s the end of it. He’s about to be very disappointed.
"Even you aren’t quite that selfless,” I reply.
He grows still. “What are you talking about?”
I hold his eye. “You think Marie’s the hidden child.”
He runs a hand through his hair, and gives a particularly forced laugh. “That’s crazy.”
“Is it? Because she was conceived during the war and born after it, in France. You’ve referred several times to hiding Marie, and your mother said she thought the circle of light might be like Excalibur…something only a chosen one could access, but she knew she wasn’t the chosen one. But you can pretend I’m wrong if you want. I’ll just discuss the theory with Marie and see what she thinks.”
His jaw grinds. And then he exhales slowly, unhappily. "Fine, yes. In the last letter my mother wrote me, she told me what she believed and asked that I make sure Marie stays hidden here.”
I’m glad he’s admitted I’m right, but the whole thing still doesn’t make a lot of sense. Hiding Marie here because of a theory about who she could be is a little extreme, and Henri is usually level-headed. “But she might not even be the hidden child. I mean, lots of families probably conceived daughters during the war and gave birth to them afterward.”
“Yes,” he says, “but of the first four families to ever develop the gift, only one resides in France. Mine.”
“How could you possibly know that?” I ask.
“Nothing is certain, of course, but on my mother’s side it’s all been pretty thoroughly documented. Since so few of you can carry the ability, it’s pretty straightforward.”
I sit with that a moment. If he’s right, it pretty much has to be Marie, doesn’t it? So maybe it’s not extreme after all. “So when I first arrived here, when you were so awful to me..."
He looks away again. "I thought you'd found her. I meant to shoot you but I just couldn’t."
“And here I was just thinking you were an aggressive jerk.”
He gives me a lopsided smile. “I wouldn’t rule that out either.”
“I won’t tell anyone about Marie when I go home,” I say. “I assume that’s why you were worried about me visiting your mother in the first place.”
He shakes his head. “No, I already knew you wouldn’t. My concern was that you’d tell Marie.”
My eyes go wide. He can’t expect to hide this from her? “But—”
He holds up a hand. “Yes, she deserves to know,” he says, “but first I think she deserves to have a normal life. This circle of light, if she's this hidden child of the prophecy—we have no idea what it really is. How does she follow her heart with that kind of pressure? I want her to make the decisions she’s going to make, free of it. That’s what my mother wanted for her too.”
I put myself in Marie's shoes. You’d think this circle of light she’s supposed to produce is probably a child, but even if it isn’t, the responsibility of it could freeze her in place. Because how will she ever know if her next decision is the one she’s supposed to make. One bad choice—turning the wrong corner, choosing the wrong mate—could ruin it all.
"You'll need to tell her eventually," I reply.
"I will, but not yet. Let me give her a few more years. Let her fall in love, decide on the life she wil
l have."
Meanwhile, he puts everything he wants from life on hold in order to protect his sister, to preserve her ability to choose a direction for herself.
"I won't tell her,” I say. “But I'm going to give her the information she seeks...about where your mother was headed.”
He stiffens, his head bent low as if he’s waiting for a judge’s sentence. “What year?”
He has stated before that he’s certain she’s dead, but I still wish I wasn’t the one who had to confirm it. “She went back to 1918,” I reply. “I’m sorry.”
He nods, his head still bowed. “I already assumed she was dead,” he says quietly.
I think of the moment they found Kit in the lake. The sight of the policeman carrying her tiny frame, her long hair a waterfall over his arm. Until that moment, it remained possible she was simply lost or playing a prank.
I lay my hand over his. “There’s a difference between suspecting something and knowing it for sure.”
Henri leaves me to dress and then I slowly walk downstairs. My speed has less to do with exhaustion and more to do with dread. I wish I didn’t have to be the person who destroys Marie’s hope.
She smiles at me when I enter the room. "Back safe and sound,” she says, so casual she could be mentioning almost anything—the weather outside, the amount of sugar in my tea—but her hands tremble as she places a plate in front of me. I glance up and in her face is everything: she remains a girl who longs for her mother. She is envious of the time I just had with her. And I envy her for having the mother she did, even for a short while. “I already know about your trip, to some extent,” she says. “You weren’t even back yet when I suddenly had this memory of my mother telling me about your visit, as if it was something I’d known but buried. Isn’t that amazing?”
I frown. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to change your memories.”
She shakes her head. “It was a good memory and I’m glad to have it. Meeting you reassured her about the future.”
I can’t imagine how that’s possible, but I’m glad if it’s true. "She was lovely. I was able to enjoy her company despite the resemblance to Henri."
Across Time: Across Time Book 1 Page 7