His mouth tips up at that but Marie seems like she hasn't even heard it.
She takes the seat across from me and clasps her hands on the table. She appears calm but her hands are twisted so tight they’re nearly bloodless. "And she didn't have any clue what was to come?"
I shake my head no, although, to be honest, I'm uncertain. I saw something in her quiet appraisal of me that was both happy and sad at once. "No. And she didn't want to tell me anything, but once I got her talking about the two of you she opened up." Marie holds herself still, braced for bad news, and I can’t put it off anymore. “There were reports of the circle of light being seen behind Sacré-Coeur, just after the war,” I say gently. "I think that’s where she went.”
“But that—" She closes her eyes as the color bleeds from her face. “That was twenty years ago.”
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I know you were hoping…”
She shakes her head, brushing tears from her face. “It’s okay,” she whispers.
Henri has been silent, brooding, throughout this conversation. “It’s for the best that we know,” he says. “At least we can finally put it behind us now.”
Marie’s head jerks up. “Put it behind us?” she exclaims. “She could still be out there somewhere, trapped. Maybe she has amnesia. There’s nothing behind us.”
Henri and I exchange a stunned glance. I don’t think either of us imagined Marie still hanging on to her hope at this point. “Marie,” says Henri, shoulders sagging under a sudden weight, “there’s nothing to be done now. You have to realize that.”
She turns to me. "My mother said you’d be important to us. Maybe you and I are supposed to go back to 1918 and find out what happened to her."
“Absolutely not,” growls Henri, and though his edicts typically inspire a desire to rebel on my end, I hear the panic that rests just behind his words. “Our mother and Amelie’s aunt both disappeared going there. The two of you risking your lives to find out what happened would be insanity. Our mother would kill you herself for even suggesting it were she here.”
I agree with him. And while I still question if I’ve done enough for them, if I’ve done what my sister wanted me to do, there’s no way I could be the best person to travel to 1918 with her. I’m the worst time traveler I’ve ever heard of, while Marie can flit from place to place and time to time as easily as she breathes. If two people far more skilled than myself got trapped there, it’d be a death sentence for someone like me.
“I’m not saying we do what they did,” Marie argues. “They had no idea it was dangerous, and we do. We can just travel there and watch from afar. See who’s responsible.”
"Marie," I plead, “I can’t possibly be the person your mother claimed was coming to help. My abilities are ridiculously limited, and I'd be so exhausted by the journey you'd need to spend a week nursing me back to health in 1918 before we were on our way. If someone is meant to help you with this, it is not me."
She nods, looking down at the table. "Someone else will come then,” she says, and then she looks at us both with a forced smile. “And for now I will simply enjoy your company. You will stay with us, yes? Another week or two, perhaps?"
I glance up at Henri. At his shoulders straining against the linen of his shirt, that lock of hair falling over his forehead. I will miss him, I realize. I adore Marie but it’s him I’m truly sad to leave. And that is so, so wrong. None of this is real. He’s an old man and I’m practically engaged.
I avert my eyes. “I’m sorry,” I reply. “I really think it’s time I went home.”
"You aren’t ready," says Marie-Therese. "You are swaying on your feet even now."
"I’ll rest tomorrow and leave the day after. What's the worst that can happen?" I ask with a forced smile. "If I can't make it all the way home, you'll just host me 20 years into the future."
The idea makes my stomach swim unhappily. I picture the two of them still here, alone. No children. Their faces lined with years and hard labor. Or perhaps Marie-Therese will be gone and Henri will be here with a wife and children. I don't much like that image either.
Neither does Henri. When Marie goes into the other room, he looks at me, his face a little sad. "When you return home, I'll be an old man," he says. "I don’t want you to see me that way.”
I shake my head, the smallest possible movement. He will be lucky to make it to old age, to survive the war. I don’t want to care. And I already do, more than I ever imagined possible. It makes me wish I’d never come here in the first place.
"Doesn't it seem...unfair somehow?” I ask. “People who are older than us always seem different, almost a different species. As if they were always old and faded and cared about the wrong things. I wish there were a way for us all to see each other exactly as we would like to be seen. To freeze ourselves at a certain age and stay that way if we choose."
"There is a way," he says. "You already have it. All you time travelers do. My mother was 39 when she left but she could have passed for 18. She came to see me at school once. My mates all assumed she was my sister."
"What good is staying young if the people you love can't stay young with you?" I ask.
His gaze holds mine. For one moment, and then another. "You're right," he says quietly. "It would be nice if we could all be young at the same time."
When I fall asleep, I dream about weddings. A wedding in my apartment, which I’m not prepared for, and guests are knocking on the door while my roommate and I frantically hide all the dirty clothes.
Then I dream I’m at Mark’s parents’ estate in Westport. From the window I can see the white chairs set out on the hill overlooking the river, the guests milling around already. Mark is there greeting everyone, his gold hair catching the light, million-dollar smile flashing. But my mother is out there too, walking toward him, and my stomach drops to my feet.
I need to find him, I think. I need to tell him the truth before she does.
I go downstairs, pushing my way through the crowd, and then find myself alone, standing just at the river’s edge. No, not alone, because Kit is here too, flailing in the water a foot away. Her small hand latches around my ankle, the grip strong as an adult's, trying to pull me in. “Kit, stop,” I beg. She only pulls harder, glancing behind me at Mark, who is coming toward us with eyes that are wide and shocked, staring at her muddy hand, at the hem of my dress turning black.
“He doesn’t even know who you are,” Kit says. She tugs again, harder. Both my feet sink into the mud and the water rises around my calves. My breath come in tiny, shallow bursts.
“Kit,” I beg. “Please stop.”
"Promise you’ll help Marie."
I’m sinking now and Mark is just watching, as if he knows exactly what led us to this point, as if he’ll never forgive me for it. It was insane to think I could tell him the truth. He will never understand what I am, or what I did.
“I’ll help her,” I cry. “Just please don’t pull me in.”
“I will drown you if you don’t,” she replies, in my mother’s voice. “Mark and I will drown you.”
I wake crouched in the corner of the room, weeping. I can still feel Kit’s grip on my ankle. And I can still feel the promise I made in that dream like a brand on my skin. It’s a promise I’m going to break, though, and I wonder exactly how she’ll make me pay for that once I’m home.
11
I’d hoped my last full day here would be pleasant, but when I wake the rain is coming down in sheets. Henri drives Marie into town to teach her class and I’m stuck inside, alone and bored out of my mind.
I pace aimlessly, trying to ignore my anxiety about returning home, as well as my anxiety about Kit.
Last night’s dream is never far from my mind. Mark and I will drown you if you don’t. Was it just metaphorical—my own subconscious telling me I’m going to drown in guilt if I don’t tell Mark the truth? Except telling him is not an option. He would never accept me. He would never accept what I’ve done. Whereas, I can l
ive with being drowned by guilt. I’ve survived it ten years already.
I continue to pace, biting my nails and wandering closer and closer to Henri's room. I've never been inside it. Under normal circumstances, the very idea of snooping gives me hives—I can barely even stand to watch it on TV because I’m always waiting for the person to get caught.
But I need something to take my mind off the return home, and cars in 1938 are far too loud for anyone to sneak up on anyone. The truth is, I just want to see his room. Henri is like a song you want to hate yet find yourself humming, ears straining for even a hint of it. Even if I’d never admit to my curiosity openly, a part of me wants to know who he really is.
I push the door open, feeling a trifle guilty but mostly curious. It's fairly austere, as I'd have expected. He's not exactly the needlepoint-and-flower-arrangement kind of guy. Mostly what I notice are the books—lining the shelves, stacked on his nightstand, piled on the dresser.
Yesterday's clothes hang over the back of a chair. I'm not sure what compels me to do it, but I let my fingers run over his trousers. They are heavy, like military fatigues. His shirt lies just under the pants, a coarser material than I’m used to. It smells like him. Like lye soap and skin and something male I sort of like.
I picture him dressing in here alone, and undressing, climbing into that neatly-made bed at night. Who does he think of when he slides between those sheets? My heart gives a single, hard thud at the idea of it.
I run my hand over his pillow, then pick up the book on the top of the large stack near the bed. Baudelaire. Poetry. It's hard to imagine Henri reading anything but farming journals, but it reminds me that he wants things he'd never dare say aloud. A small and very wrong part of me wishes I could be the one to discover what they are.
I hear the rumble of a car on the road and quickly duck out of the room, closing the door behind me. It feels as if I’m leaving a mystery behind, one I’d very much like to solve.
Marie returns later in the day, but there is no sign of Henri, despite the weather, until he appears at dinnertime, pissed off and covered head to toe in dirt.
He bathes and changes clothes before dinner, but it does not seem to improve his mood. Marie is doing her best to make my last night here a cheerful one. Henri is making no such effort.
"I do wish you would stay," Marie says. "With one more week, I could definitely teach you how to cook. In spite of microwaves, wives should know these things."
Henri looks up from his plate. "Personally,” he says, “if I were Mark I’d prefer a wife who could tell me the truth.”
I roll my eyes. "Are we really back to this? I already told you I’m not jumping again once I get home. So it will be the truth.”
He sits back, pushing his nearly-full plate away from him—something I’ve never seen him do before. "No, it won’t, because that’s not who you are,” he replies, a dangerous light to his eyes. “You’re giving up everything for a man who doesn’t even love you.”
His words shouldn’t hurt, but they do. “What fascinating theories you concoct with absolutely no basis.”
Henri's eyes raise to mine—darker now, like the forest at dusk. "You’re deluding yourself if you think otherwise. How could he possibly love you? He doesn’t even know you.”
I once again see Kit’s hand around my ankle. He doesn’t even know who you are, she said.
I feel a sob swelling in my throat and I refuse, refuse, to cry in front of him. I just won’t do it. I jump up from the table. “Excuse me,” I say, but my voice cracks on the last word, ruining the effect entirely, and I bolt out the front door. The rain is coming down so hard I can barely see an inch past my face but I just need to get away from him. I'll leave now, I think. I'll leave right this second and Henri will never know he made me cry.
I run toward the barn, soaked to my skin, ignoring the sound of him shouting somewhere behind me.
But just as I arrive, I find myself airborne. Plummeting down, down, a fall that seems to occur in slow motion. Long enough for me to wonder if I will survive it.
I land feet first. Hear the snap of a bone and the sharp shot of pain above my foot. I crumple, flailing as I fall to the ground.
Above me somewhere a match is struck. A torrent of profanity, all in French. Then a ladder slides into the hole and Henri is scrambling down it faster than I ever dreamed someone could. He drops to the ground beside me, and his hand reaches out to hold my face. In the dim light his golden skin appears pale for the first time.
"Are you alright?"
I squeeze my eyes shut. I don't want to cry but the pain makes it nearly impossible not to. “It’s my ankle. I think it’s broken.”
"I'm so sorry,” he whispers. “This is all my fault. I was being awful tonight and I don't know why. I didn't think you'd take it to heart like that."
I’m still not sure why I did. Perhaps because, as always, there was a grain of truth in the ugly things he said, and I was able to find it.
"Please don't cry," he begs. His thumb brushes a tear away, and he continues to hold my face, looking at me like I'm the only thing in the entire world that exists for him. For a moment, I wish that I was. I wish he would pull my face to his and kiss me, and I wish for it in a way I've never wished for it from Mark.
A spark of pain from my ankle jolts me back to the present, reminding me that what I’m thinking is insane. Henri, in my time, is a 72-year old man. And it’s that, more than anything else, that has another sob swelling in my throat. “Why is there a hole here?” I ask.
“You told me we’d need to hide food and weapons,” he says. “I never dreamed you’d run out here tonight like this.”
"Mon Dieu!" cries Marie, standing at the edge of the hole. She speaks French so quickly I can't understand a word she's saying, but I know she's angry, and it seems entirely directed at Henri.
"Je sais, je sais," he replies. I know, I know. Finally, he holds up a hand. "Enough, Marie. You can yell at me later. Right now I'd like to get her out of here so we can set the bone."
I shudder a little at that last bit...set the bone has me picturing Civil War hospitals, biting down on a rag as limbs are fixed, or amputated. Will it be any more advanced here, with these two French people my own age in charge of the repair? I doubt it.
"I'm going to carry you over my shoulder,” he says. He lifts me as carefully as possible and begins to climb the ladder, holding me with one hand and the rungs with the other. He’s trying not to jolt me but even the tiniest movement around my ankle is intolerable.
"Hurry, Henri," urges Marie Therese.
"She's heavier than she looks," he grunts, ruining what might have been a decent moment between us.
"Or maybe you're just not as strong as you look," I reply between gritted teeth.
"So you think I look strong," he says in response as he takes the final steps out of the hole. "Good to know."
He puts me down and I take weight on the good ankle, which doesn't feel all that good. Marie’s arm comes around me.
"Poor Amelie," she whispers. "It looks like you may be stuck with our company a little longer than planned."
I almost laugh when I realize how simple the solution to this problem really is. “No,” I say. “Wait. If you just time travel to earlier tonight, you can warn me it’s going to happen and I won’t run out of the house. Problem solved. I’d do it myself except I can’t jump backward without landing on my ankle.”
The answer is so obvious and so easy, but there's something strange going on with her. I expect her to readily agree, but instead her eyes slide from me to her brother, and then rest there, her mind both on us and also somewhere very far away. "But then I might fall in the hole,” she argues.
Henri exhales loudly. "For God's sake, Marie. You know how to land well. You've never injured yourself once. And if you're so worried, just go back a few days, before it was dug."
She folds her arms across her chest. "No."
My jaw and Henri’s drop at the same time.
"You cannot be serious!" Henri yells. "She’s in pain! What the hell is wrong with you?"
Marie's arms fold tighter. "I think perhaps it was fate. And I am not one to interfere with fate."
The pain in my ankle makes it hard to argue and harder still to think straight but I do my best. "Why could fate possibly require I stay in 1938 for months while my ankle heals?" I demand. "I'm not even supposed to be here." I suppose I could jump on my own but the idea of it makes me wince, when I can hardly bear standing right now on my good ankle. But I’ll have to, if she can’t be reasoned with.
Henri sees the look on my face and scoops me up again. I want to weep with relief.
Marie shrugs. "I guess we'll know once your ankle is better," she says simply. "I’ll go call the doctor."
She walks ahead of us and Henri follows with me in his arms, careful to avoid jolting me. “I know you’re planning to jump backward yourself if she refuses,” he says. “Please don’t do it.”
I would laugh at how well he knows me if I wasn’t in so much pain. “Why not?”
His eyes close. “Think about how poorly you land under the best of circumstances. I knew you were in the barn both times you arrived here because I heard you falling. If you jump back on your ankle, in addition to how unbearably painful it would be, you’re likely to break something, and then what? Or what if you land in another place, or another time? You’ll survive a broken ankle. But it could be so much worse.”
I sigh. He makes a good point. Knowing me I’d wind up with a shattered spine in the wrong year. But if I spend two months here, two months will pass at home as well, and that can’t happen. “I guess it just depends,” I reply. “I have to be home by August, no matter what.”
He carries me inside, placing me on his bed rather than my own. I’d probably find this all pretty exciting but the pain in my ankle is getting worse and Henri seems to sense it. He pushes both hands back through his hair, gritting his teeth.
Across Time: Across Time Book 1 Page 8