Page 33 of Across Time

And then I open my eyes and find Henri standing across the counter, staring at me. His eyes are all pupil. "What was that?"

"I told you I was going to make cocoa. I was just remembering the recipe."

He shakes his head, slowly. "Non. You didn't just remember. You seemed to flicker in and out like a candle. You were…shimmering. I saw it."

My breath stops for a moment, and then releases. It's not possible that I time traveled. I'm not even good at being in one place at a time for God's sake and being in two places at once…it’s just not a thing my kind does. "You were seeing things."

"Then how did you recall that recipe verbatim?" he challenges.

"I just have a good memory."

He tilts his head. "Tell me again how much cocoa you need then."

I blink, searching my head for the answer. When I was reading the ingredients, it's as if I was channeling it all. "I told you. You were supposed to remember."

He gazes at me, still with that assessing look, like I just escaped from a locked cage wearing a straitjacket, and he wants to know how I did the trick. "I do. A quarter cup. My point is that you don't. So don't try to tell me this was your fabulous memory at work."

I sigh loudly. "I didn't time travel, if that's what you're trying to say. I was standing right here the entire time."

He tips his head, as if he’s conceding the point. But it’s clear as day in his face that he doesn’t quite believe me.

* * *

Fifteen minutes later we are seated on the porch with our cocoa. While he sets up the chess board, I gaze out over the fields, surprised by how oddly content I am right now. I love the colors of the farm on a sunny day, but I think I almost like this more: against the charcoal gray of the sky, all the colors seem deeper. The grass and vines a lush green, the air pleasantly balmy rather than sweltering.

We begin to play. Slowly, carefully. Even a week ago, I wouldn’t have done this with him solely because I couldn’t stand to see him win. Now, oddly enough, I’m not sure I’d even mind. Perhaps I’m giving him too much credit, but he’s surprisingly easy to be around at the times when you’d expect him to be unbearable.

As the game carves its way through the afternoon, we put the mugs of cocoa aside and replace them with glasses of wine, which I’m starting to come around to, although perhaps I merely like that it’s accompanied today by salty olives and fresh bread.

We finish the bottle and he opens another. “You must have a hollow leg,” he says. “Marie-Therese would be falling out of her chair right now.”

“I suppose that’s unladylike, according to you?”

He grins. “Not at all. Though it would be unfortunate if I were trying to get you drunk.”

Butterflies flutter in my stomach at the mere suggestion of it. “Is that your strategy on dates?”

He gives me another half-grin. “I have a few others I try first.”

I’ll just bet he does. He probably doesn’t even need to get a girl drunk. He can just smile at her the way he’s smiling at me right now and she’d pull her dress up to her waist.

“Do you and Mark do this?” he asks.

For a second I think he’s asking about sex. I blink. “What? Oh, chess? No, we..." The truth is that I'm not sure what we do. We haven't lived in the same place since the summer we met and our time together has always been in short bursts of togetherness, jam-packed.

When we see each other, it’s always a reunion, and therefore a celebration…a slightly exhausting one. I sleep for a full day when I come home from a trip with him. I’ve been looking forward to the time when we could have a day like this, yet I’m hard pressed to imagine it. Mark never wants to stop. The idea of staying home on a rainy day might drive him insane.

For so long, he’s represented how I will grow, how I will become the person my mother wants me to be, once we’re together. But now it occurs to me for the first time that I might be giving something up in exchange.

14

As the weekend approaches, Marie attempts to demand that I attend church.

“She can’t,” Henri argues. “She sticks out like a sore thumb.” Trust Henri to find the most unflattering light to put me in. “Just let her stay home.”

“We had an excuse last week. She’d just broken her ankle,” says Marie. “We no longer have one.”

I swing forward on the crutches—I’ve gotten pretty adept at getting around on them as long as there is level ground. "I'm on Henri's side for once,” I tell her. “I have no desire to go to church."