Across Eternity Read online

  “Does she want to die? Does she want your kid to die? Does she even know you’re half-Jewish?”

  His jaw tightens. “Of course she knows. You think I’d conceal something like that—”…from my wife. He doesn’t say it, but the unspoken words ring in the air between us, and God, I hate him for them. “It was my decision, and what’s done is done.”

  I squeeze my eyes shut. I’m so angry at him, but that’s not what matters here. In four weeks, I’ll be back in my own time and I can deal with my anger and sorrow then. “So, what, exactly, is your plan?” I demand.

  “We can’t do anything until the baby is born,” he says. “And no infant should be on a crowded ship with God knows what being transmitted. Besides, I can’t just abandon my country. I need to stay and fight.”

  I dig my hands in my hair. It’s all still make-believe to them. They see the future as survivable because it’s human nature to assume you’ll be the exception…but World War II held far fewer exceptions than any of them can dream.

  “Henri, I read about this when I was home. It’s so much worse than even I knew. There will be internment camps for the Jews in France. Two big ones right outside Paris, and all those people will get deported to the concentration camps I told you about in Germany.”

  His eyes close. “Is there anywhere safe aside from America?”

  “Switzerland, if you can get there. At least get yourself south, to what will be the free zone, and figure things out from there. It’ll buy you some time.”

  He nods, sighing heavily. “How long do we have, before it starts?”

  “The Germans will cross the Meuse on May thirteenth. After that, nothing is safe. They don’t just bomb Paris. They fly low over the civilians trying to escape and shoot them as well. And then they take over and you’re trapped.”

  “I will be eligible to take leave again in the spring,” he says. “I wouldn’t want to go before then anyway. I have no idea how hard it will be to find lodging, and I can’t risk it with a newborn.”

  It’s all about the baby for him. No crowded ships because of the baby. No risking a trip south because of the baby. I’m sure I’d make the same decisions in his place, but that doesn’t lessen my bitterness. It’s on the tip of my tongue to remind him of his carelessness, that he has created a situation that might get them all killed. His sagging shoulders and pallor hold me back. He already knows this is his fault.

  Then he does something I’ve never seen him do: he sags against the trellis, as if he’s struggling to stay upright. The color bleeds from his face.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask.

  “Nothing,” he says, eyes closed and teeth clenched. He is holding his side.

  “Is it your wound?”

  “It’s fine. I’m just recovering slowly.”

  “Bullshit,” I reply. I reach out and pull up his shirt before he can argue. The bandages covering his wound are soaked through—yellow, plus fresh blood as well. “Henri,” I breathe. “You realize your bandages shouldn’t look like that, don’t you?”

  He shrugs and starts to pull away but I hang tight to his shirt and begin to pry the gauze loose. His wound is red and swollen, oozing. “It’s infected, you idiot,” I hiss. “How long did you let it go like this?”

  “There’s work to be done,” he says.

  “And who will do this work for your family next year when you’ve gone septic and died?” I demand. “Get back in bed.”

  He ignores me. “I can’t. The harvest is in. This has to get done.”

  My arms fold. It reminds me of last summer, when I had no leverage here, no control over the situation. Except this is serious…and I do have some control. I’m glad right now to have this anger in my heart. It makes it easier to use cruelty and threats to get what I want. No, not just easier. It makes it enjoyable.

  “Get back in bed or I’ll tell Yvette about us.”

  His head jerks toward me. “You wouldn’t.”

  “Try me,” I reply. “If you think things are tense now, just wait until I give her enough details about the two of us to make her stomach turn.”

  He heaves a sigh and wipes at his brow again. No wonder he’s sweating, with the fever he must have from that infection. “She’s pregnant. Please…just don’t. It’ll be bad for the baby.”

  As if I care about your stupid baby. I turn on my heel. “Then you’d better beat me back to the house.”

  Within seconds Henri is beside me. “I have a farm to maintain,” he spits. “You can’t just blackmail me to get your way.”

  I stop and laugh unhappily. “This farm will not be yours in a year, Henri!” I cry. “Don’t you get it? The Germans are coming, and they are going to take everything, and then they are going to kill you and Marie and probably this kid you’re being so precious about, and where will any of this have gotten you?”

  His jaw drops, and he looks at me as if I’m a stranger. “This isn’t like you,” he says quietly. “You’ve changed.”

  “No shit,” I reply, walking again. “Try discovering that the love of your life gave up on you, three months in. See how much of yourself remains when it’s done.”

  I continue inside and he follows. Marie and Yvette glance at us in shock. I’m sure we both look mutinous enough to scare almost anyone.

  “Henri’s wound is infected. He has a fever.” I glare at Yvette. She slept beside him. In theory he can’t keep his hands off her. How could she fail to notice it? How fucking stupid is she? “I need gauze and tape and some kind of alcohol,” I tell Marie. “And we need an antibiotic, so call Dr. Nadeau.”

  I push Henri toward the room. “Lie down,” I demand.

  His mouth opens to object but then he glances at Yvette, standing in the doorway, and complies. I begin to unbutton his shirt.

  “I’m his wife—” she begins, but when she sees the gauze soaked through, her words fall away and she turns slightly green. “It might be best for the baby if I, um, wait outside.”

  I take the alcohol Marie’s handed me and soak a fresh piece of gauze with it before applying it to the wound. He stiffens, but his eyes never leave my face.

  “I wasn’t trying to say you were worse,” he says through gritted teeth. “Just that you’ve changed.”

  I prefer the angry Henri. The kind one makes tears spring to my eyes and I have to keep my head down so he won’t notice. “I know I’ve changed,” I reply. “And I’m definitely worse.”

  Marie returns to the room. “Dr. Nadeau says there’s nothing he can do,” she tells me. “They made him send all his penicillin to the front.”

  “And you believe him?”

  She’s as wide-eyed as a schoolgirl. “Why would he lie?”

  I shake my head. How she can have such faith in human nature after what we went through? Perhaps because she wasn’t conscious for it. I envy her that.

  “He has children, and grandchildren,” I answer. “Do you really believe for a moment that he didn’t set something aside for his family?”

  She blinks. “But then it’s for his family.”

  “No,” I reply. “Anything he has is mine, if I want it to be. And right now, I want his goddamn antibiotics.”

  If they’re unsettled by my harsh answer, neither of them say so. Marie walks out and I continue to bandage Henri’s stomach. “How do you know so much about this?” he asks.

  “I don’t,” I reply. But I apparently know more than your useless wife.

  I smooth the gauze down and tape it, thinking of the last time he lay in bed like this, shirtless, in daylight. I’d been making scones when he called out to me. I came to the room to see what he needed and found him much like he is right now, naked from the waist up, pants unbuttoned.

  “You made it sound like you were injured,” I’d said, perching beside him.

  “I’m in a great deal of pain, which is similar,” he replied with a grin, his hand moving between my thighs. “Let’s discuss a cure.”

  “Perhaps you’re dehydrated.”


  His fingers slid beneath my panties, sliding in small, torturous circles. “How fortunate for us both that you’re not.”

  It was like that with us. He just had to touch me, and I’d abandon every other plan.

  Now he is someone else’s, but I want him just the same, and he’s looking at me with the same expression he had that day. His eyes hungry, desperate. He is gravely ill from a gunshot wound, yet looking at me like all of this—his wound, his marriage—is as meaningless as the scones that burned that day and stunk up the house until nightfall.

  “You shouldn’t be looking at me like that,” I tell him, rising.

  “I know,” he says, flinching. “I’m sorry.”

  I feel his eyes on me, though, until I’ve walked out of the room and shut the door behind me.

  In the kitchen, Yvette’s gaze sweeps over me, head to foot, and she gives me a tight smile. “Already done?” she asks. “Such a treat. My husband never takes a day off. I’ll go see if he has need of me.”

  My jaw grinds. There’s absolutely no question in my head what kind of need she means. And yet I resume my place at the table, because a part of me wants to hear it. Wants to hear his noises, wants the pain of accepting that he loves her and enjoys her as much as he did me. I want to scrape myself raw with his sounds until I finally accept that it is over with him and meant as little as it must have for him to have moved on the way he did.

  But within a few seconds, Yvette returns. “You could have told me he was asleep,” she says with pursed lips.

  Henri couldn’t possibly be asleep yet. Which means he’s pretending to sleep to avoid his wife.

  I feel hope begin to stir in my stomach, though I wish it would not.

  * * *

  Late that night I walk to Dr. Nadeau’s house. I could have driven but I know petrol is rationed now, so I imagine Henri wants to save it for his wife and the baby. I try to ignore the surge of irritation I feel at that thought.

  Dr. Nadeau’s office is in the back of his home, so I climb the fence and then peek in the window. I could time travel inside, but I’d rather not get caught in here naked if I don’t have to.

  I push at the window and it slides open. The mere idea of breaking into a home like this would have terrified me before. Now I just feel relieved that it’s an option. It takes me no time at all to find some penicillin—the idiot didn’t even take it out of his medical bag. How ill might Henri have gotten if I hadn’t come for this? Would Nadeau have let him die, simply so he could hoard the drug for himself? I feel a small throb at my temples. Nadeau deserves to be punished for that lie, for his selfishness. My hand closes hard around the two bottles and syringe I’m taking. He’s lucky I have other places to be right now, and he’s lucky I’m leaving soon. I have a feeling that, if I stayed in 1939, this wouldn’t be the last time he pissed me off.

  When I return to the farm, Henri is sitting on the front steps, waiting in the moonlight. He rises when I walk up, his jaw clenched tight. “Where did you go?” he demands. “I was worried sick.”

  “Worried about what?” I snap. “That I might go fuck someone else the moment your back was turned? No, Henri. Only you do that.”

  He reaches for me and I find myself spun, pressed tight to his chest. He’s holding my arms tighter than he should and I see that thing in his eyes again—pain and hunger and a touch of madness, as if he no longer cares what happens. I understand all of it. It’s how I feel most of my day.

  “I thought you might have left.”

  We’re so close, closer than we’ve been since I arrived. His eyes flicker to my mouth and I feel that glance all the way to my bones. I want him. And I’ve missed him so much. Why can’t I just have a little of what I came here for?

  He swallows, everything in him taut and desperate, the cords of his neck straining as if he’s lifting an impossible weight. And then he releases me.

  “I got you penicillin,” I say, stifling a disappointment so vast it feels like it could knock me off my feet. I pull the vials from my pocket, along with a syringe.

  His mouth falls open. “You stole it?”

  “Well, yes, since Dr. Nadeau wasn’t offering another method, the lying bastard. Come inside so I can get this over with.”

  He takes a chair at the table and I draw up the medicine. I have no idea what size dose he needs, but for tonight I decide one small syringe will be a good start. He watches me the whole time, and I’m reminded of the way he used look at me that first summer together, when we pretended to hate each other—as if I was passing by too quickly, but he was trying hard to see me anyway.

  I inject the penicillin into his arm, and then drop the bottle and syringe into my pocket. “I’ll call someone in Reims tomorrow and find out the correct dosage,” I tell him.

  Before I can pull away, he grabs my hand, and presses his lips to my knuckles, holding them there longer than he should. My pulse skitters in my throat at the contact, at the way it makes me long for more. It’s unfair of him to do it to me, to keep me here on this fine edge of pain and desire all the time. It would be kinder if he’d just tell me he didn’t want me. Kindest of all if he’d told me, right from the start, that he just didn’t care enough.

  I pull my hand from his grasp and walk up to my room. And then, just for a moment, I let my lips rest where his did, on my knuckles. It’s almost as if I can still feel him there.

  19

  SARAH

  The next time I see Henri, walking into the kitchen mid-day to tell us the hired hands have arrived, he looks like his old self again. I feel an odd sort of joy at the sight of him healthy once more, and when his eyes find mine across the room it’s a struggle not to smile.

  “When, exactly, do you meet your musician?” asks Yvette suddenly. I’d forgotten she was even in the room and my gaze returns to the apples I’m peeling.

  “A few weeks.”

  Her mouth pinches. “I only ask because you’re sleeping in the baby’s room, you know.”

  “We’d never discussed having him sleep in there,” says Henri sharply.

  Yvette’s laughter is forced. “Well, where else would he sleep, Henri? Would you have him stay in the barn all winter instead?”

  “I assumed he’d be in with us at night,” Henri argues, “so we can hear him.”

  Yvette waves her hand. “No, no. I’m going to need to rest. Babies should learn to get through the night on their own anyway.”

  “Babies, perhaps,” says Henri. “Newborns, no.”

  I don’t enjoy their minor squabble as much as I’d have expected. If anything, it only makes them seem more married than they already did.

  “I’ll be gone by then,” I tell her. “You don’t need to worry.”

  Henri’s jaw is tight and even Marie looks unhappy. “We want you to stay,” she says softly, casting a small, scolding glance at Yvette, who seems to neither notice nor care.

  I don’t reply. Instead I rise, set the peeled apples on the counter and go outside to help with the harvest. It seems kinder than reminding them all that I am desperate to leave.

  All afternoon I work alongside Marie and Henri and the help. I try to focus on filling my basket, try to forget that this is the last time I will do this with them. It would probably be the last time anyway. There’s no chance they’ll still be here this time next year; not like this, anyway.

  “You should be resting.”

  My head jerks up to find Henri standing there, casting a long shadow over me. His voice is gentle but firm.

  “I like being outside,” I tell him.

  “You’re pushing yourself too hard,” he says. “Sit on the porch if you want to be outside. Not this.”

  He crouches beside me and reaches for the shears I hold in my hand. I cling to them. “Don’t worry,” I tell him. “I’ll be out of your hair as soon as I’m able.”

  His face falls. “You can’t possibly think that’s what I want,” he says, his eyes searching mine.

  I avert my gaze. “If it’s no
t, it should be. You’re starting a family, remember?”

  He sighs and after a moment, he rises. “Yes, I remember,” he says. “It’s a little hard to forget.”

  * * *

  We eat a dinner of cheese and bread and fruit from the orchard, plus the last of the ham, because Yvette did nothing useful while we were working.

  “It was so dull here all day,” says Yvette. The three of us are so bone-tired it’s hard to dredge up a response. Or perhaps it’s just that all the responses that fly to my lips involve ways she could have entertained herself, while perhaps relieving Marie and me of some work.

  “It’s apt to be like this the rest of the week,” says Marie. “I picked up some books at the library. Perhaps one of them will appeal to you.”

  Yvette sighs. “Poor Marie. Your life here has been so quiet you hardly know what people do for fun.” She reaches for Henri’s hand. “You know what we should do this weekend? Go to Paris. We could stay in a hotel, take a mini honeymoon at last. Amelie and Marie don’t mind, do you girls?”

  Henri’s eyes glance up for the first time through the entire meal. They flicker to me before they return to his plate. “No,” he says flatly.

  “But why?” she pouts.

  “Because it’s the harvest and I’ll be working all weekend,” he says between his teeth, sliding his hand away from hers. “This is what life on a farm is like.”

  I see her eyes flash before she pins her anger beneath a strained smile. “Well, at least there’s the dance on the twelfth.”

  The date catches my attention. Cecelia made such a big deal out of October 12th, the day I was supposed to arrive. As if something monumental occurs on that date. Is it something the dance will set in motion, perhaps?

  Henri’s gaze returns to me before it goes back to his plate. “I doubt we’ll attend that either.”

  “Not attend?” she gasps. “But we have to! And it’s sponsored by the church, so there’s that. Let poor Marie and Amelie find some nice young men while I have one last hurrah.”