Page 95 of Across Eternity

“How is this possible?” I whisper.

“Well, you showed me all these places when we came last summer and I wanted to see what happened so...” she trails off, and her eyes grow wary. “Are you mad?”

I shake my head, still trying to understand how she could possibly exist. And then I begin to put things together: the way certain smells have been making me gag, the constant rolling of my stomach. The fatigue. How have I not realized until now?

I’m pregnant.

I’ve been pregnant since Henri left Saint Antoine, and the girl who stands before me is the result.

She’s still waiting, wondering if I’m mad, when I don’t understand how she possibly managed to arrive in the first place.

“But how did you get here?” I ask.

She shrugs. “I jumped. Last summer you showed me some of the places you stayed. I jumped to one of them, but you were leaving.”

“My God,” I whisper, pressing my hands to my face. “You’ve been following us all this time?”

She shakes her head vigorously. “Just a little while yesterday but I had to go home.”

“Home? You live here? Outside Lyon?”

Her head tips to the side, as if she doesn’t understand what I’m asking. “No, we live in Virginia.”

“Virginia,” I repeat. To go back to a specific date, to a specific place on the other side of the world with almost no landmarks to guide you...the skill it would take to orchestrate it is almost unthinkable. “Are you saying you time traveled all the way from Virginia and managed to land here?”

She nods, looking a little uncertain. “You always tell me the story about the soldier and I wanted to see him.”

I feel the air whistling through my lungs. “What soldier?” I whisper.

“Henri, the one who fights off all the Nazis.” Her face grows wary. “I always thought maybe he was…my dad? I just wanted to see him. I wasn’t going to talk to him.”

The shock nearly sends me to my knees. She’s saying she’s never met her father. And I can only think of one reason why that would be the case.

I take a deep breath, trying to focus, trying not to fall apart in front of this girl who says she’s mine. Who must be mine. Even standing here I feel a connection to her, as if something has us tethered. I want to ask her so many questions—What happened to Henri? Are the rest of the children okay? But she is too young for all that, too young even to realize how her simple visit could thrill me and break my heart all at the same time, and that she’s endangered herself by coming at all. Only moments ago, I was ready to kill her myself.

I grab her hand. “It’s not safe here, so I need you to swear to me you’ll go home and that you will never come here without telling me again. Do you swear it?”

She nods. “But...my dad is the tall one, isn’t he? The one with eyes like mine?”

I feel the sting of tears and nod quickly. “Go now, okay?”

She throws her arms around me. “See you at dinner,” she says, pulling away with a wide, fearless grin, so like her father’s. She closes her eyes, and just as quickly, she’s gone. Leaving me so stunned I can’t even remember why I came into the house.

She time traveled over an ocean. How is that possible? Marie has a talent, like I do, but nothing along the lines of what I just witnessed.

Suddenly I recall Madame Durand, reciting the prophecy to me so long ago: In France there will be a hidden child, born of the first family, conceived during a great war and born on the other side of it.

This will be a child born of two first families, conceived during a great war, but not born on the other side, unless…

Unless I chose to go to my own time to have her. If she’s the hidden child, nothing could be safer than hiding her five decades into the future, could it?

But no. I would never leave Henri and the children. Let someone else be the hidden child. It does not have to be her.

I walk back to the barn and lie down next to Henri, who is still sound asleep. I curl up against him as if I can somehow cement us together. I wish I’d asked if he was alive when she was born. Because if he wasn’t, it means we have less than six months left.

He rouses. “Well, hello there,” he says. I start to pull away, but he holds onto me. “Not so fast.”

“I need to check your wound.”