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She’s right. I know she’s right, but I don’t think I can go through life without him and without my children. I just want to return to Nanterre, to a time when we were happy, and stay as long as I can.
And if that’s not possible, I just want it all to end.
I look toward the tunnel, to the place where I just left Henri.
“He isn’t there, Sarah,” she says softly.
A sob wracks my chest. “Where is he? Where was he buried?”
She squeezes my hand. “All is not lost, and all is not as it seems. There are things that lie ahead which even you can’t imagine, and I think your story with my father isn’t over. You will come to believe this yourself, in time.”
“What do you mean?” I ask. “Is he not dead? If he’s not dead I can just go back. I can kill the time traveler before she did all this and—”
“It’s too late for that,” she says. “But I think it best that you discover the rest as it unfolds. You want the future ahead of you, I promise, and it’s time for it to begin. Are you ready?”
I think of Henri. This isn’t the time for weakness, little thief, he said. You were chosen to bring her into the world for a reason. Show the universe it hasn’t made a bad choice.
Our wedding day seems like so long ago, but I remember the moment when I entered the church. I was glad then for all the ways we’d suffered because it brought us to where we were. Perhaps, one day, I’ll be glad for this too.
* * *
Henri’s daughter is born an hour after I arrive in 1991.
She is tiny and perfectly formed, long fingers and a tiny pursed mouth that reminds me so much of her father that I burst into tears at the sight of her. I miss him. It’s only been minutes and I miss him, and I don’t know how anyone can expect me to go through the rest of my life feeling this way.
“Was it true?” I ask Cecelia, gazing at my daughter. “That things aren’t what they seem? That my story with Henri isn’t over?”
She smiles. “Do you think I’d lie about something like that?”
“What about Charlotte?” I hate it, that pathetic, hopeful note in my voice.
Cecelia’s smile fades. “She’s buried in the Loire Valley. A beautiful spot on a hillside, beneath a large oak, near where Lucien and I grew up.”
I pull the baby closer to my chest as the tears stream down my face. I’ve lost so much. Charlotte. Henri. Even Cece and Lucien. I can visit them, but they will no longer be mine. All I have left is this little girl in my arms, and something surges in my blood, a new kind of protectiveness, the sort that borders on insanity.
Anything that threatens her, anything that stands in her way…I will destroy it without a moment’s thought. From now on, there is nothing to live for but her, and I will exist only to keep her safe.
52
SARAH
1995
Quinn sits on the floor of Cecelia’s library, the very image of her father, with a book spread open in front of her. She’s only five but has been reading for over a year, one of many ways she stands out. There will be more of them soon, once she comes into her power.
I know the time traveler responsible for Henri’s and Charlotte’s deaths is gone, but I still picture her on every corner, waiting to steal Quinn from me. I saw her here once, watching Quinn and me as we walked down to the Seine from Cecelia’s home. She posed no threat—the visit must have occurred before she died. My life is moving forward, but she seems to be working backward from some point in the future, and the fact that she never attacked Quinn or myself tells me it was someone else she was after, that day in 1941. I can’t ask her since it might change the past, not that she’d tell me anyway. I suppose it’s a mystery for my daughter or her children to solve in the future. One of many.
I tap on the frame of the door to get Quinn’s attention. “I heard my little girl was in here,” I say as she looks up, “but I guess I’ll keep looking. I only see a big girl in this room.”
Her face breaks into a wide smile and she runs to me, circling my legs with her small arms. “I missed you,” she says earnestly, and my heart squeezes tight with pain and joy at once. I was gone for three weeks this time, visiting Edouard, Marie, Lucien and Cece back in the 1940s as I do each summer. Marie and Edouard are their parents now. I’m glad for it, as they had no more children, yet it hurts all the same. Cecelia and I remain close, and she is thrilled by my visits to her childhood, but Lucien is already changing from a rambunctious boy to the serious young man he’ll become, and he has little time for a doting American aunt.
My entire beautiful past—it’s like a splinter in my heart that won’t budge.
“You’ve gotten taller,” I say, lifting her into my arms. “Stop growing so fast.”
Her arms tighten around my neck into the fiercest hug, and then she is scrambling back to the floor to show me the book she’s been reading. She holds up a picture of a home—no, not a picture: an architectural rendering. That ever-present sorrow climbs into my throat. I wish Henri was here. I wish he could see how like him she is.
“It’s Monticello,” she says. “Thomas Jefferson designed it himself. Can we go?”
