Page 28 of Across Eternity

She pours coffee for us while I bounce on the edge of the couch like a little girl who needs a bathroom badly.

“I have a favor to ask,” she says carefully, handing me a cup of coffee, “and it matters a great deal to me.”

I take the cup she proffers, nodding, ready to agree to anything as long as it gets me home to Henri. “You originally did not arrive until October twelfth,” she says. “And because you were very unwell that time, you had to recover, so you remained there.”

My stomach tightens into a knot. “I’m going to remain there anyway.”

She doesn’t meet my eye. “I know. But I’d like you to promise me…that you’ll stay. To go sooner could be disastrous. I wanted to help you and make sure you got better medical care this time, though to be honest I can’t remember why I wanted it—I suppose because whatever went wrong the first time has been corrected. But the date. The date is important. And you could destroy everything by arriving too soon.”

“I’m planning to stay forever,” I reply. “I don’t understand why we’re even discussing this.”

She averts her gaze, but not before I see that worried thing in her face.

“Cecelia,” I say, forcing a calm to my voice I don’t feel. “Why wouldn’t I want to stay?”

She hesitates. “Things…may not be exactly the way you want them to be, at first. You’ll need to be patient. I don’t want to tell you too much, because knowing might change it all. Just please promise you’ll stay.”

I don’t like the sound of any of this. I know Henri waited for me. What more could I possibly want? “If Marie-Therese refuses to go to America after everything we just went through, I’m probably going to kill her myself.”

She doesn’t laugh. She doesn’t even smile. “Promise you’ll stay. It means a great deal to me, personally.”

I close my eyes, shutting out the concern on her face. She has no idea what’s in my heart. Even if the war is encroaching and food is low, there’s nothing that could make me leave Henri’s side after everything we’ve been through. “I promise I’ll stay. If he’s alive, that’s all I need.”

She squeezes my hand. “Remember you said that.”

16

SARAH

I land in the barn, as always. This time, however, I land in the loft, and send an entire bale of hay crashing into the stalls below me, nearly falling right over the edge with it.

The horses panic at the falling hay and begin to bray inside their stalls. For a moment, I just laugh, with tears in my eyes. I’ve made it. What kind of miracle is it that I’ve survived so much and finally made my way back to him? I climb down the ladder, still a bit stiff after so many months of immobility. The blanket hangs just inside the barn door, waiting for me still.

I throw it around myself and walk into the yard, under the light of a newly rising sun, just as Marie opens the door.

“My God,” she grouses loudly. “What is it now?”

And then our eyes meet, and the color drains from her face. “No,” she whispers. She blinks hard. “It isn’t possible.”

Henri appears in the door at just that moment and the two of them stare at me.

“Amelie?” he rasps, half question…half something else.

I nod and then he is crossing the yard to me, pulling me against him so hard I can barely breathe. Marie runs and throws her arms around us both, sobbing. “It’s not possible,” she says again and again. “We found your bones. It’s not possible.”

“Thank God,” whispers Henri gruffly, his mouth pressed to my hair. “Oh, thank God.”

He’s gripping me so hard that it hurts, my body still tender and bruised from those months in the hospital, and I never want it to stop. I dreamed about him, I visited him, and yet his heat, his smell, his size…all of it was never this. Never entirely real.

“Henri?” A woman’s voice, coming from behind them. “What’s going on?”

He stiffens.

And my stomach drops. I know, even in my confusion, even as my brain begins to deny the truth, that in the woman’s voice I hear possession. I hear someone who believes she owns the rights to Henri’s thoughts. And his embrace.

His grip on me loosens. I look up and see dawning horror in his face, his and Marie’s both.

The woman crosses the yard. She looks quite like me: my height, hair the palest blonde. But with one key difference. She is very, very pregnant.