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6
HENRI
The house sits empty, waiting for them.
And I am empty. I press my face to my hands. Come home, Sarah, I plead silently. Come home.
How could I have let them go? Why didn’t I find a way to stop them? My God. I can’t stand the possibility that it will stay like this forever. That I’ll never learn what happened to them and will go through the rest of my life assuming the worst.
Father Edouard comes to the house, tugging at his collar and uncertain. His eyes widen at the sight of me—unshaven, still wearing yesterday’s clothes. Empty whiskey bottles line the counter, but I let him in anyway, beyond caring.
“I hope I’m not disturbing you,” he says as he steps inside.
I push a hand through my hair. I haven’t been entirely sober for weeks now. I don’t respect the person I’ve become in Sarah’s absence, but at this point I’m just trying to survive. I have only the barest hope that she or my sister will return, and it’s on behalf of that tiny flicker that I remain here at all, that I bother trying to make it through each day.
“Can I help you with something?” I ask.
He pushes his hands into his pockets and stares at the ground, shockingly uncertain for a man who speaks in front of hundreds each weekend. “Marie said she’d be gone two weeks,” he says. “And it’s been six. I was wondering if you’d heard from her?”
It hits me all over again. Six weeks. Is there any chance at all they’re coming home if they’ve been gone that long? Even if Sarah needed to recover, even if she needed to return to her own time for a while, Marie could easily have been home by now. The journey wouldn’t even be hard on her.
“I haven’t heard from them,” I reply, the words gritty in my mouth.
“Surely there’s someone you can call,” he urges.
I press my fingers to my temples and his gaze flickers to the empty jug on the table. “It was a spur-of-the-moment trip and I have no idea where they went,” I reply.
“We should call the police, then,” he says, pacing the length of the room. “Border patrol can at least tell us what country they’re in and how long they’ve been there.”
Police. One way to make a bad situation worse. They will come here, find that Sarah and Marie left without luggage, without travel papers, and then I’ll be tried for murder. Yet nothing could make me sound more guilty right now than arguing against Edouard’s suggestion. “Perhaps,” I reply.
He stops his pacing and shoves his hands in his pockets. “You’re in love with her, aren’t you?” he asks. “Amelie?”
I stare at the table. “She isn’t actually my cousin.” I take a swig off the bottle of whiskey.
He grabs the bottle and takes a drink himself. “She’s different,” he says, staring at the floor. “And so is your sister.”
Perhaps he only means their looks, because God knows that’s one thing they can’t disguise. But I get the sense he means more by it. “Yes,” I reply, “they are.”
“I won’t say anything to the police,” he says. “I have faith they’ll come home.”
I glance at him, and recognize something of myself in his bleak, desperate face. But his faith that they’ll come home makes no sense. “Why?”
“Because I’d struggle to believe in a God who’d keep them away forever,” he says quietly. He takes another gulp of whiskey and walks out the door.
I wish I shared Edouard’s faith, but I do not. That God of his already took my mother. I suppose I lost my faith in His benevolence long ago.
7
SARAH
For a week, I wait for Katrin’s return. A week of listening to the guards laugh and complain while they hit us with the butts of their rifles, trip us, fondle us for their amusement.
You will die, I find myself thinking. You will die and I’m going to make it slow and painful.
Katrin returns to our room late at night, lying down in the bed beside mine, which is now free. But she is different, emptier.
I don’t know what to say to her. I’m sorry. I’m a coward. I should have done something. But it’s not enough. Nothing will ever be enough. “Are you okay?” I finally ask.
