Page 63 of Across Time

We've entered a new season of Henri, I realize. The one in which he's willing to admit he likes having me here, that he possibly cares. It's probably for the best that he’s arrived at this position so late because, with enough time, I might just be persuaded to stay.

* * *

When I return home, Marie is waiting. She winces at the sight of my weak, pale ankle. “I hope you won’t try to leave just yet,” she says quietly. “And you might want to test landing on it, just to make sure you’ll be okay?” I’ve rarely seen her look as depressed as she does right now.

I’m sure she’ll miss me, just as I’ll miss her, but her sadness right now is more than that.

I nod. “I’m sorry. I know you wanted me to come with you to 1918.” I suspect she hoped for other things too, but I can’t even bring myself to suggest it or I might be the one to cry instead.

She looks at me blankly for a moment. “1918?” And then she laughs, a mournful, resigned sound. “I never thought I’d persuade you to go anywhere,” she says as she walks away. “It was rather the opposite.”

* * *

I spend the remainder of the day walking around the farm and helping with chores, waiting for my ankle to lose its stiffness. When it does I’m both relieved and disappointed. A part of me thought I might be stuck here a little longer, but by the time I go to bed my ankle is already feeling close to normal, bringing home the fact that it’s really ending, all of it. The horseback rides, the picnics, the afternoons with Henri reading on the porch, sipping on that Beaujolais I didn’t care for when I first arrived.

I long for time with Henri alone, but it doesn’t come. Marie-Therese, sensing that my departure is imminent, suddenly decides to stick around the house. I spend the day helping her make preserves with my eyes on the window the entire time, hungering for the sight of her brother.

On the third day, though, comes a reprieve. When I walk inside from watering the pumpkins early in the afternoon, Marie is just hanging up the phone and bouncing with excitement over the fact that her friend Jeannette is in labor. She begins hastily packing a basket.

“Her husband is at the Maginot Line so I’ll need to stay and mind her daughter until her mother can get here from Paris. Tomorrow morning at the earliest.” She looks up at me with the brightest smile on her face. “A baby! Can you imagine?”

I smile back. Ankle ordeal aside, Marie-Therese would make such a good mother, if she would just move on from her crush on Father Edouard. She could settle down with Xavier. Even Luc, as abrasive as he was, could probably give her the things she needs: children, a home of her own, an easier life.

“I think you should go out with Xavier,” I tell her. “Just once.”

Her brow furrows. “How has the conversation gone from the miracle of life to a boy who went to a school with my brother?”

I shrug. “Because a boy who went to school with your brother could lead to the miracle of life.”

She pauses. “Yes, I suppose he could.” But her joy is slightly diminished, and it makes me wish I hadn’t said anything.

She leaves for Jeanette’s with Henri, and when he returns he comes inside rather than heading straight to the fields.

“It might be a nice day for a ride,” he says. He throws it out like a challenge, but his eyes are uncertain. All this time our rides have had an element of charity to them, as if they were a debt he was paying for his role in my immobility. Now I don’t need them, and he no longer needs to offer them.

There’s no denying the slight relief on his face when I agree.

* * *

We ride side by side.

The farm has changed a great deal since I arrived at the end of May. All the colors are more saturated, and everything is full and lush now, the grapes nearly ripe.

"What's it like here, in the fall?" I ask.

He glances over at me for a moment too long. "Beautiful. The sky is a deeper blue. All these trees will look like balls of flame and the air will be crisp. We bring in help for the harvest, but our days are very long. You’d like it, though, I think.”

I wish I could stay. I wish for it so much that I have to swallow down the urge to say it aloud.

I’ve only just realized we aren’t heading to the meadow when the lake comes into view. I draw Fleur to a halt. "Why would you bring me here, after what I told you?"

He stops alongside me. "Because I think it's time you faced this fear of yours. Replaced your unhappy memory with a pleasant one. Wouldn’t you like to go through your life without shuddering at the sight of every lake? It’s no way to live.”

I’ve thought this before myself. Once I have children, the way I’ve kept myself in a bubble won’t be possible. They’ll want to swim, and God knows I’ll never let them go alone.

What could possibly go wrong if we sit by the lake? Nothing. I’m like Kit as a small child, certain there’s a witch in the closet no matter what common sense tells me.

"Fine." I take a quick breath.