Page 103 of Across Eternity

The driver and another staff member follow, carrying the children—and Marie—inside boxes. Lucien laughs as he emerges. “That was fun,” he tells me, wrapping his arms around my neck as I lift him out. No one else laughs, not even Charlotte, who clings to me afterward. She’s old enough, now, to understand the danger we’re in.

I spend the next few hours trying to keep the children occupied and relatively quiet, waiting for Henri to come. He arrives just after dinner, pulling me against his chest and holding me tight.

“Ahem,” says a voice behind him and we both turn to find a woman who must be Genevieve.

She’s middle-aged and pretty, wearing a midnight-blue ballgown that looks like lingerie, her hair perfectly coiffed. “Sorry to break up the reunion,” she says, “but I’m about to entertain fifty German soldiers so this is the time. I’m working on getting papers for you but they won’t be ready until the end of the week. I understand you,” she says, turning to me, “have a good passport. I’ll need you to run to the forger’s location to check on the papers in a few days.”

Henri’s mouth opens to object and I step on his foot. Pregnant or not, I’m the one who’s best positioned to take on a dangerous job right now.

“I know it’s not ideal,” Genevieve concludes, “but you’re safe here. Just try not to make too much noise.”

And with that, she’s gone, and we set about learning how to keep eight children quiet.

* * *

The hours in the attic pass slowly. The tension is constant, given the steady stream of German soldiers through the rooms below. The heat would be brutal were it not for the fans and the flow of air through the dormer windows. Food is brought up the back staircase once or twice a day by a maid who seems scared to even look at us, as if our tenuous situation might catch. On the third day she signals to me to follow her, and then downstairs gives me a scrap of paper with an address only a few blocks away.

“Tell them you’re there to pick up the cigars for Herman Gunter. Do not return directly to the house, but wander through the city a bit and go into other shops until you’re certain you weren’t followed.”

I find the building with relative ease—it really is a cigar shop, and I wonder if perhaps I’m just running errands for Genevieve instead of picking up papers.

“I’m here for the cigars ordered by Herman Gunter,” I tell the man behind the counter.

He looks at me and nods, going to the back and returning with a cigar box in a bag. I take it from him, and walk to a bookseller’s at the street’s end, standing outside in the heat while I ensure I haven’t been followed. I thumb through Les Fleurs du Mal by Charles Baudelaire. I remember finding it on Henri’s nightstand that day, so long ago, when I snuck into his room. I called it curiosity back then, my desire to sneak through his things, but it was lust...something I’d had no experience with until him. Now, of course, there’s love as well, but at seven months pregnant I’m finding that lust has taken top billing, oddly enough. I pray our papers come through soon. We could use some privacy.

I close the book and am about to put it back when I sense I’m being watched. I raise my head slowly as the book falls from my hands.

She’s here.

The time traveler from 1989. She is standing just across the street and looks different in clothes from this era and with her hair pinned back, but I’m certain it’s her. There’s that same malevolence on her face as she watches me.

She blends into the crowd and I turn on my heel, fleeing toward Genevieve’s, toward safety. I’ve run three blocks before I realize that if she can time travel, she can follow me on foot. All she’d need to do is return to the bookstore and follow my tracks—which means the only way I can prevent her from finding us is if I time travel myself, except if I do so, I’ll lose everything I’m wearing and everything I’m carrying...namely, the documents in the cigar box. I turn, rushing back to the bookseller’s, and shove the papers into a copy of Madame Bovary. Once they’re secure, I head toward Genevieve’s, stopping in the alley closest to her house.

Despite my aunt’s spark, I’m still not good at landing in different places. I very well might arrive back in this alley, which opens me up to a wealth of other problems. There’s no time in which a naked, pregnant female can walk about without attraction attention. I take a deep breath and then focus hard on the Genevieve’s attic, on the dust motes floating in sunlight and Henri’s worried face as he awaits my return. I land gracelessly on the floor, relieved to see my family’s shocked heads jerk toward the sound.

Henri grabs a blanket and rushes over to cover me. “Are you alright?”

“I saw her,” I gasp. “The time traveler who was watching me in 1989. I saw her just now.”

“Are you sure she’s bad?” he asks. “Maybe she’s just a family member? Another granddaughter of Katrin’s?”

I glance from him to Marie, my heart beating hard. The fear in her eyes reflects my own. It will sound paranoid, voicing my thoughts, but I know what’s happening is precisely the worst-case scenario Marie once suggested could occur: this woman is working her way backward, looking for the right time to strike.

And I’m worried she’s found it.

“I’m sure she was bad, Henri,” I whisper. “I’m sure.”

50

SARAH

Genevieve sends a maid to retrieve the papers from Madame Bovary. She’s angry at me for leaving them behind, and since I can’t tell her that I time travel, I have to let her remain so. “Don’t ask my staff to save your hide if you won’t save your own,” she says to me. “From now on, you get those papers yourself or you don’t get them at all.”

The next day, four of the children leave for Limoges, where Edouard waits. Marie watches them longingly, wishing she were going with them. “It’ll happen eventually,” I tell her.

“I hope so,” she says. She turns her worried eyes to me. “I don’t think you understand how bad this is.”

I laugh. “Our situation? I assure you I do.” I’m now farther along than Yvette was when she gave birth to Cece and trapped in a swelteringly hot attic.