Page 26 of Across Eternity

Her lips press to mine. “It’s not the time for rest,” she says.

I hear voices nearby speaking French, and the moment I notice them, she’s gone. That sorrow hits me all over again and my hand digs into the dirt.

Come back, Sarah. Please come back.

The voices grow closer. I’m tempted to let them pass and leave me here to die. But then I think of Sarah, who sacrificed herself for my sister. Sarah, who would never have gone down without a fight.

For her, and her alone, I call out for help.

15

SARAH

Over the next few days I become accustomed to life in the hospital, but I’m still anxious and wary everywhere I go, and I’m unable to escape it. When I sleep there are nightmares. I dream that Gustave has me cornered, that the bed is on fire, that Iris has me trapped. Sometimes I dream that Mathilde forgot about the babies, and I watch as she pulls them, still and cold, from that laundry bag where they were hidden.

It’s not much better when I’m awake. Using a walker, I’m allowed to take strolls around the building and down to the park, which I do several times a day, but everywhere I look I see threats of one kind or another. There is a bodyguard with me at all times, but it’s not enough.

I read everything I can about the war in my free time, and that doesn’t reassure me either. I wish I knew how to fight, how to keep us safe, and I don’t. Killing the guards was easy. Protecting our family from nonspecific threats for five years straight is another matter entirely.

It all makes me wonder if I’m ever going to feel safe again.

Rob comes to the treadmill beside mine three days after the incident, as I like to refer to it.

“I’m sorry about the other day,” he says. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

I shake my head. “You didn’t...I just—”

He hesitates and then turns off his treadmill, which was already going so slowly it was barely moving. “Don’t apologize. I don’t know what you’ve been through, but I know it was bad, and I get how you must feel.”

“You do?”

“My sister was raped in college,” he says. “Walking home from class in the middle of the fucking afternoon. It took her years to feel safe again.”

I swallow. “But she’s okay now?”

He lifts a single shoulder. “She married a really great guy and I think most of the time now it’s behind her. She never did go back to school, though. I’m sorry. Maybe that wasn’t the best example to provide. I just wanted you to know I get it.”

In other words, she did not recover, but she can pretend she’s alright for the most part. I don’t want to pretend when I get home to Henri. I don’t want to have a panic attack any time we’re around strangers.

I don’t want to be this person I’m discovering inside me. The one who can rationalize away the things she’s done. The one who even takes pleasure in some of it. Because sometimes, when I picture the shock on my aunt’s face as I plunged the knife into her chest or remember the guards’ screams as they burned alive, I feel warmed by it. That vicious place inside me sated, momentarily. There are times when it seems to be the only thing that brings me joy.

Henri deserves better, and I’m not sure I’ll be able to provide it.

* * *

That afternoon, Cecelia joins me on one of my walks, her bodyguards walking discreetly behind us. Just as we reach the park I feel a prickle between my shoulder blades and glance around us. I see the same things I do every day—old men sitting on benches, toddlers running clumsily over the grass, women smoking with a book in hand.

“What’s the matter?” she asks. “Are you too tired?”

I bite my lip. I’m sure I already seem crazy, given my freak-out the other day, and what I’m about to say won’t help. “I feel like we’re being watched.”

Cecelia pats my arm. “Louis and Philippe are here,” she says. “You’re in good hands.”

“They won’t always be,” I whisper. “I need to be able to defend myself. Do you think you could get me a gun?”

She laughs. “Fragility, trauma and weapons don’t mix well. My goal is to get you back to 1939, just as you arrived before, not turn you into a murder suspect.”

We make a circle of the park, and just before we turn back to the hospital, I spin toward the woods...just in time to see a woman standing there disappear into thin air. My knees buckle at the sight and it’s Cecelia who grabs me before I fall.