Page 112 of Across Eternity

“But why only in their time? Why not now?”

“You tell me,” she says. “These are your people and your legends. You tell me.”

I think about the story, the very little I know about the island and what lies ahead for it. The four families can’t come home, the legend says, until they are united once more. United once more in the twins, who don’t yet exist.

“Maybe the island can’t exist, at least for us, until the twins do,” I venture. My eyes close and I sink into a seat, burying my head in my hands. “But if the island won’t exist until they’re born, and I’m going to die when they’re born...how am I going to see him?”

“Maybe you don’t actually die,” Cecelia suggests softly. “Maybe you just go there instead.”

The possibility of it makes my heart soar—I miss Henri every minute of every day, and there’s an emptiness inside me that no one else could fill—but it breaks me at the same time. “I’ll die when they’re born. I’m okay with that but...” My voice rasps. I always thought I’d be there to protect my daughter, that she’d always be able to lean on me. “Do you know how long I’ll have with Quinn? Did I stop going back to see you at a certain point?”

She hesitates. For a moment I think she’s not going to tell me, and then she does. “Yes, your visits stopped,” she says. “She and Nick...you’ve already seen it yourself. They’ll be young when they fall in love, and they’ll be young when the twins are born.”

“I don’t have that long with her, then,” I whisper.

“No parent ever has long enough,” she replies. “You just have to treasure each moment as it’s handed to you.”

I’m not the only one who will suffer over this, though. Quinn’s going to have to live with the knowledge that the twins’ births killed me. “I wish there were another way. It’s so much to put on her when she’s already got the entire prophecy on her shoulders.”

“She’s a strong girl and she’ll be a strong woman, just like her mother. I think you were chosen for a reason—because you’ll do whatever is required to make the world a safer place, through the twins.”

I close my eyes, knowing she’s right. Until the end comes, I will be happy for each moment I get. And I’ll do everything I must, no matter how much it pains me, to make the prophecy come to fruition. For everyone who’s died trying to make it come true. Henri, most of all.

* * *

Quinn returns from another day with Nick, lit through with a small, wild joy, a bright light only he brings out in her. She climbs into my lap, her head resting against my chest, and my throat squeezes tight. This time with her is more fleeting than either of us can realize, but I’m only losing what every mother does, eventually. There will always come a day when your child is too big to be held in your arms, when she no longer wants to sit in your lap or curl up against you at night. A day when she leaves home, when she creates her own family, when you are separated by death.

We all, in the end, have to give up the things we love, and I am no exception.

Even so, I would not change a thing.

54

HENRI

1941

The Germans who rushed into Genevieve’s basement are dead, but I know I don’t have long either. I’m weak, not thinking clearly, but if there’s any way to reach Sarah, I have to try. I crawl into the tunnel, hoping to follow her and the children to the Pont de l’Alma, but the effort takes the last of my strength. My eyes close and I picture her—my sweet little thief. She became a lion, in the end. She’ll do whatever is necessary to keep our daughter safe.

Time passes. I’m sweating and feverish. I dream that I’m in the vineyard, and Sarah is walking toward me, lush and smiling, wearing the white dress with the small roses. The world is green and new, and in my wife I see everything good, everything I want in the world. “Take off the dress, Sarah,” I whisper when I reach her, and she laughs, batting my hands away.

“Madame Beauvoir is here,” she says. “She’ll see us.”

“Good,” I reply, pulling the dress off her shoulders, “maybe she’ll stop visiting so often.”

She begins pulling me, farther into the fields where we won’t be seen. The pain I felt before is ebbing and in its place is a drowsy sort of contentment. If she is leading me to heaven, I’m ready to follow.

* * *

A hand on my shoulder rouses me from the dream, and when my eyes blink open, Sarah is beside me. The pain in my back and chest has spread, has begun to fill me, and I don’t think I have long. “You need to go,” I whisper. “You can’t be here now.” I’m having a hard time gritting out the words.

“It’s fine,” she says, laying her head on my chest. She’s shivering with cold, and her voice is faint. “More than twenty years have passed, Henri. The children are grown, and happy. It will all happen as it’s supposed to now.”

She feels the same and in the dim light she looks the same, but slowly, I begin to understand. “You came back to die with me.”

“I came back to go on to the next place with you,” she says, her voice barely above a whisper. “But even if there isn’t one, it’s enough, the time we had. You and our family—they were worth all of it.”

My lips press to her head. She releases a single, long breath, and then she is still. I hold her against me. “Take me with you, Sarah,” I whisper. “Wherever it is you’ve gone.”