Page 15 of Across Time

The idea of it makes me smile. I’d like to be a mother like that one day, but can you be a good parent if you weren’t raised by one? I’m not sure. “I think I’d have liked your mom.”

“She’d have liked you as well,” he replies. “She had terrible taste in people.”

To my surprise, I laugh. "I don't suppose you've brought a pie?"

"Unfortunately, no,” he says, rolling toward me and propping himself up on his forearm. “And I don't suppose you'd know how to make one."

I squint up at him. "No, but I think the lack of a stove might be the bigger issue."

"We could always go back to the house," he says. "There's still a bit of pie left there. There are also beds, and pillows. And fewer bloodthirsty animals.”

I roll up to my forearm, mirroring his position. "Why?” I ask softly. “You wanted me gone, and it made sense that you did. I even agreed with you. That’s why I’m here.”

He's quiet for a moment. "I went overboard,” he finally says. “I do worry about Marie-Therese, but she’ll survive. I realized during dinner that half of what worries me is how sad she’ll be when you leave, and it made me feel…guilty.”

It’s the longest Henri has ever spoken to me without being snide, without insults or sarcasm. It’s a side of him I suspected existed, but never thought I’d get to see firsthand. "Guilty? Why?"

"Because it reminds me how much happier she might be in another life. If we could move to Paris, or even into town. If she could go to university."

"Are you sure those things aren't possible? I'm the same thing she is, yet I go to university and I live in a big city and it's never been an issue."

In the moonlight his face grows guarded. "One of the last things my mother ever asked of me was that I keep Marie-Therese hidden here, and safe. I'm incapable of saving my mother. No matter what Marie wants to believe, I know she’s dead. But the very least I can do is obey her last wishes."

He blames himself for his inability to save her, and he also blames himself for limiting Marie-Therese. There is no good option for him, no way that he isn’t at fault regardless of what he does. I understand that a little too well.

"Perhaps when you marry?" I ask softly. "Then there will be another female in the house for Marie?"

His frown deepens. "A wife would make Marie feel as if this is no longer her place. I won’t marry until she’s found someone and left home."

Henri is obviously staying here on this farm, alone, to take care of Marie. And she is staying on the farm so her brother won't be alone. How are the two of them ever going to have their own lives if they're so worried about each other’s?

"You could marry a terrible cook so Marie feels necessary?" I suggest, half-joking, before I realize it sounds as if I'm offering myself as a candidate. "One from your own time, that is."

He lifts a brow. "So you are not willing to stay here without your air cooling and the thing that cooks a potato in seven minutes?"

I grin. "I might be able to live without microwaves, but television is really cool. You'll have to take my word for it."

He flips on his back, and after a moment he breaks the silence, addressing his next quiet comment toward the sky. "You will never hear me say this again, and I will deny it if asked, but I would like it if you'd stay. Until you're better, that is."

I feel a smile tugging at the corners of my mouth, something soft and warm in my chest. Thank God none of it is visible to him. "Well, since it turns out I know less about wilderness life than I realized, I'll take you up on that. I suppose that means we should return to the house."

"I suppose." He shrugs, as if he's truly ambivalent about the idea. And maybe I am as well. There’s absolutely nothing special or fancy about lying on a coarse woolen blanket outdoors on a summer night, but it hasn’t been all bad.

We rise and walk silently back to the house. Once inside, I turn to head up the stairs but feel his hand at my forearm, pulling me toward the kitchen, where he grabs the pie off the counter and sets it on the table with two forks.

"Come on, little thief," he says. "I know you want some."

I slide across from him and grab a fork. "Perhaps you could come up with a nickname for me that isn't monster or thief?" I ask. "It doesn't even have to be something good. Just something that isn't uniformly negative."

He holds the fork to his lips. "So a neutral nickname then. Mon petit fromage, perhaps? Cheese isn’t an offensive word, I assume?"

"You'll need to say it in English, whatever it is. Even the worst insults sound cute in French."

"What if I just call you thief, but in French? Voleuse. You see? Accurate, yet not too harsh."

I raise my chin. "It's not accurate at all."

"Says the woman with pockets full of ham," he replies, but he's grinning, and to my surprise, I laugh. Since I've arrived, for the most part, every word out of his mouth has tapped into this well of shame inside me. Thief, liar, monster. But tonight there is no rancor in his words. Instead I hear a hint of begrudging admiration: he likes me better for the fact that I stole the ham, that I tried to preserve myself while doing the right thing. “It was brave,” he says softly, as if he can hear my thoughts. “Stupid, but brave.”