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After Cecelia leaves, I place the call. I haven’t spoken to my mother in over a year—not since that ugly phone call a summer ago when she told me she wished I’d never been born. I have no expectation that she will want to hear from me, but I don’t really care.

"Mom? It’s Sarah.”

The other end of the line is silent. “Oh,” she finally says, with a weary, disappointed sigh—the same kind she gave every time I called, every time I asked for something. Whether it was permission to sit at the table or permission to leave it, a suggestion I might come home to visit or a suggestion it was time I should go, her reaction was always this—disgust and exhaustion, as if I was once again asking too much.

In that weary, disappointed sigh, I’m reminded all over again why I chose to cut her off, and I don’t feel the need to slowly build up to the purpose of this call. “I met your sister.”

I hear a muted gasp on the other end of the line. “Iris?” she asks after a moment, her voice barely audible. For once, I’ve managed to surprise her. “She’s alive?”

“No,” I reply. “But I learned some interesting things before I killed her.”

She laughs—a short, dismissive bark. “As if I’d believe that. Are you under the impression that would upset me even if I did?”

“I couldn’t care less if you’re upset,” I reply. “But I now know that Peter Stewart wasn’t my father, and I’d like the truth.”

The other end of the line is silent. Angry silence, I’m sure. It’s the only kind my mother knows. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she finally says, her voice imperious once more, “but I’m hanging up.”

I anticipated this part. She thinks she’s immune to the consequences of her actions, and that I’ve got nothing to hold over her. But I know her Achilles heel: my brother. She’d rather die than let him know what she truly is.

“I’ll tell Steven. And I’ll take a paternity test to prove it to him, so don’t think you can lie to him the way you have been to me my entire life.”

“You wouldn’t do that.”

I laugh. “Wouldn’t I? I stabbed your sister in the chest. You think telling Steven the truth would be hard for me?”

Air hisses through her teeth. “You really want to know what you are?” she asks. “Fine. I’ll tell you. You are how God punished me for being a part of that family. Your father...he took advantage of me, the night before my wedding. All because of what Iris did to his mother. And I’ve had to endure you and the pain you’ve brought into my life ever since. You’re just as evil as he is. So now you know. Never call this number again.”

She hangs up, and I hold the phone to my chest, feeling worse than I did before. So much ugliness had to exist to create me. How could anything but ugliness result?

14

HENRI

We are three miles over the German border when my commander asks for volunteers to scout ahead.

The battle has been brutal already. Venturing forward is a risk only an insane man would take. Or one with nothing to lose. These days, I often believe I’m both.

I start to rise and Maurice—a friend from Saint Antoine—grabs my sleeve. “What the hell are you doing?” he hisses. “You have people who need you back home.”

He’s right, but my responsibilities are now a burden that feels unimaginably heavy. “We’re all going to die in this war anyway,” I reply as I stand. “Now or next year.”

The men still seated look at me as if I’m a hero, when in truth it’s cowardice. God help me, but I’d welcome the end.

* * *

I make it nearly a mile through the woods, close enough to spy the enemy’s location, before a bullet tears into my side. I fall to the ground and slide along the forest floor, hoping I can somehow get back to my unit and tell them what I know.

Soon, though, the world seems to tilt and shift. I hear words in the wind, and night comes when it was only daylight a moment before.

“Henri,” whispers Sarah, her hand on my back, “you need to wake up.”

I open my eyes to find her there. Not the skeleton in burned clothing, but whole and perfect, smiling at me as if I’ve nodded off under an apple tree and she’s come to bring me inside.

“You’re not real,” I tell her. “You died. I found you.”

Her palm presses to my skin. “Does that not feel real to you?” she asks. “Wake up. Madame Beauvoir is here and I’m not facing her alone.”

I pull her against me. “Then stay with me here instead,” I tell her. “We’ll sleep until she’s gone.”