Page 93 of Across Time

Unlike me, she appears to already know they are one of the first families, so she doesn’t question it. Instead, she slowly drops into a chair, looking shell-shocked. “Why didn’t she tell me?” she finally asks.

“She thought it might be a burden, that it might change things for you. She wanted you to at least choose a direction for your life free of that responsibility.”

Marie nods, staring at the floor. “Is that why she went back to 1918? Because of me?”

Henri’s teeth grind, hating the way this conversation has turned. “I think so, yes.”

Her eyes well over. “And that’s why you’re so insistent on staying here with me, in spite of the danger. Because you promised her you would.”

Henri looks at her. “I stay because you’re my sister and I want you to be safe. I’d stay whether I’d promised her I would or not.”

We are all quiet for a moment. My stomach is clenched tight, praying that she’ll change her mind about leaving, now that she understands what Henri has given up on her behalf.

“I will go with you to the United States,” she says. My head and Henri’s jerk at the words, but she holds up the palm of her hand. “Hear me out. I will go, but only once I know what happened to our mother.”

Henri groans, sinking low in his chair. “So in other words, nothing has changed. You will wait here, decade after decade—if you manage to survive the war at all—on the off-chance she returns.”

“No,” she says softly. “I’m going back to 1918 to find her.”

My gasp is audible. "Marie," I whisper. "Please...don't. It's not safe. Who knows how many of our kind have gone there and not returned? It's like some kind of Bermuda Triangle for us."

"I have no idea what a Bermuda Triangle is," she replies, "but it doesn't matter. I want to move on with my life as much as you want me to. And I can't, until I’ve done this one thing."

I look to Henri, hoping he will slam his hand on the table and forbid it and threaten her with any power he has. But he sits, beaten, knowing that she has made her mind up. The same stubbornness that led to her to refuse to fix my ankle is guiding her now.

"I can't stop you," he says quietly. "I realize that. But please don't. If I’m off fighting, you and Amelie will need each other. What if we have a child? Even a child who is one of your kind wouldn't have the ability to jump, not for years. Amelie will need help."

It's shocking to consider I could have a child like me. I love Marie, and I liked her mom, but I still don't want to bring another of us into the world.

Marie isn’t dissuaded in the least. Her face is, instead, vivid with excitement. “I could leave tomorrow and be back in a week,” she says. “I just want to know where she went. I'm not planning to run into a burning building.”

Henri raises a brow. “If you saw our mother in a burning building you absolutely would go in after her.”

Her mouth purses. She doesn’t deny it. And I watch the weight on Henri’s shoulders grow, because he knows Marie is not capable of being rational where her mother is concerned. She needs someone older and wiser there to make sure she doesn't do anything stupid, and he’s not able to be that person.

But I could be.

I hear Kit’s words again. See her desperate face, shivering with cold in the coffin she will never leave: You have to find them. And suddenly I know, deep in my heart, that it was always supposed to happen this way. That the them I was supposed to help was never Henri and Marie, at least not in the way I hoped.

I meet Henri's eyes across the table, a wordless apology for what I'm about to say, before I turn to Marie. "I'll go with you."

"No," he growls. "Absolutely not.”

I lean forward, silently pleading with him to understand. “She needs someone there to watch her back, and there’s strength in numbers,” I tell him. “Like she said, we’re not going there to wage war. She just needs to see how the story ends.”

He slams his hand on the table. “If you’re going to jump anywhere, you should be jumping home! Dammit, Amelie! Every time a dangerous situation presents itself you seem to be right there, insisting on becoming part of it.”

Marie, too, is shaking her head. “I don’t want you to do that. You just came back to him. I know I’ve been awful lately, but the two of you deserve some happiness. Especially if things are about to get as bad as you say.”

“If it’s no big deal, then it should be no big deal for me to come with you,” I reply.

She bites her lip. “I can’t stop you, and I suppose it would be helpful to have someone who knows how to drive.”

Henri’s chair scrapes across the floor. He walks out of the house without a word to either of us, slamming the door behind him.

“He’s going to be panicked until you’re home safe again,” Marie says, watching the door.

My heart twists. I never dreamed that returning here would make his life so much harder. “Then we should probably go right away. Do you have a plan in mind?”