Page 95 of Across Time

Neither Henri nor I get much sleep. I know he’s exhausted, but when I wake with a start in the middle of the night, he’s lying there watching me, like it’s a deathbed vigil. I pull him on top of me, and it’s just as urgent, as desperate, as it was before.

When it’s over he presses his mouth to my eyelids and tells me to sleep, but he’s still watching me when my eyes open again, just as the first rays of light flicker over the barn. I dress and walk into the kitchen, where Marie sits, flushed with excitement. This is a problem—I want Marie cautiously optimistic at best. Cautiously being the key word.

“You look like a kid waiting for Santa to come,” I sigh.

She smiles, with an embarrassed shrug. “I’m about to see my mother again. For the first time in three years. Who wouldn’t be excited by that?”

I wouldn’t, for one. “Marie…” I begin.

She raises a hand to stop me. “Yes, I know. We’re just watching from a distance. I won’t go after her. I won’t even speak to her. Just let me have my happiness, Amelie. There’ve been too few of these moments since she left.”

Henri walks into the room and she bounces up. “Are we ready to go then?”

His jaw grinds. I know he’s struggling with his resentment—none of this would be happening if it weren’t for her. But none of this would be happening if it weren’t for me either.

“You go first,” I tell her. There’s no point in trying to go together since the jump through time is always a solo enterprise. “I’ll be right behind you.”

Henri hugs his sister and quietly asks her to be careful. She hugs him back. “Amelie will be perfectly safe. I promise.”

And with a quick, hopeful grin at me, she vanishes.

I swallow. I don’t dare jump from the house. With my luck I’d land inside it in 1918. I hold out my hand. “Walk me to the barn?”

His fingers slide through mine, all his worry and fear in the pressure he exerts. We walk slowly, unwillingly. When we reach my jumping point, he turns me toward him. “I would give anything in the world for this to not be happening.”

I wrap my arms around his neck, press my lips to his. “A week from now we’ll be married and it will all be behind us. Our biggest problem will be finding somewhere warm enough to honeymoon.”

He clutches me to him. “Swear to me you’ll find your way back. No matter what happens, no matter how long it takes, you’ll return.”

I press my mouth to his. “Of course I will. You just need to promise you’ll wait.”

His eyes close. “I will wait for you until my dying breath.”

* * *

The travel is difficult this time. I pop back evenly through the years, but have to proceed at a painfully slow rate once I reach 1919. From there I count back months and then days until I reach November 11th, 1918.

I land. My head is heavy and my body aches. Sleep calls to me, but not as badly as it has with other jumps. I'm able to stagger up to the barn, but just as I reach it, I hear the small, joyous cry of a child. I slide into a dark corner, and watch a little boy chasing chickens through the yard with their feed, shouting "Poulet, poulet poulet!"

Henri, at age three, dark-haired and rosy-cheeked.

I feel a burst of love for him, but there’s grief in it too. He's so young and innocent and unburdened. He has no idea that his father is dead, that his mother will disappear on him. Or that the girl he will love might leave him and never return.

It's the fatigue, I'm certain, that has me weeping. I slide down the side of the wall, shivering and watching his small legs recede in the distance.

"Amelie," Marie whispers from the top of the loft. "Can you get up here?"

I force my head in the motion of a nod, though even that seems more effort than I'm capable of. I crawl to the ladder and cling to the first rail. There are at least fifteen rungs to go and I’m exhausted already. I get to the second and rest my head.

“Think of my brother right now,” Marie urges. “He’s worried sick for you, and all you need to do is climb a few more rungs to safety.”

I nod and grab the next, and the one after that. I'm so weak. So terrible at this. How did I ever think I could help her at all?

“Don’t think,” she says. “Just move. Now.”

So I do, somehow, and when I get close enough she grabs my hand and drags me the rest of the way. She is already clothed, in a dress that sweeps her ankles.

"Come," she says, "I've got you some clothes."