Page 18 of Across Time

His mouth curves upward. “I’ll consider it,” he says softly, taking the tub to the garden to dump it.

Marie watches him go and then turns to me. “You’re better at persuading him than I am. What other appliances should I demand before you leave?”

My mouth opens, and then closes. She truly has no idea how drastically her life will change in the coming years. If she did, she wouldn’t be asking for appliances, she’d be asking for a safe place to live.

If they will die in the war, I can’t stop that from happening. But what if they survive? What if they survive badly, painfully, because they weren’t prepared?

I never had anyone to teach me the rules of time traveling. But I think I’m about to break a very important one.

* * *

Though I’m too nervous about tomorrow to have much of an appetite, Marie makes cassoulet for my final night here and I eat. Will I be able to hide somewhere in my own time before I pass out, naked and defenseless? If I’d known just how poorly I would fare over long distances, I doubt I’d ever have come here at all.

Henri appears worried too. “Do you think…” he begins, swallowing, “that your trip home will be easier?”

“Maybe,” I reply, unconvincingly. Returning to the point where I belong is definitely less work. It’s mindless, like the way you can drive all the way home with your mind on something else. But I sort of doubt it’s any easier physically, and that’s the real problem.

“You were somewhere private when you jumped?” Marie asks.

I nod. “I jumped from the woods. It should be fine.”

Henri flinches, imagining it, which makes me smile a little. When I first arrived, I thought he was nothing more than a very handsome jerk. And I still think he’s a handsome jerk, but he is also intelligent, funny, driven…and unexpectedly kind. All of these women Marie says he has to fight off when he goes to town—do they see all that in him? Or is he just a chiseled jaw and set of broad shoulders they can pin a couple of romantic daydreams on? Either way, he deserves to choose one and start a family. And with the war coming, I’m not sure he’s going to get a chance.

"I’m going to tell you what happens," I say quietly. “Even though you said you didn’t want to know.” My heart thuds in my chest.

Henri and Marie-Therese look at each other. And they wait.

My hands twist on top of the table. "There’s going to be another war with Germany. Not just them. Japan and Italy too."

Marie Therese stiffens, her hand sliding to the base of her throat. Her father died in the last war. Millions of French men died with him. What are the odds Henri will survive if it happens again?

"Hitler's troops come to Paris,” I continue. “In 1940, I think. And there are airstrikes as well. Not just in Paris, but in the countryside. It doesn't last long. After a few weeks, France surrenders."

"Pah," says Henri. "Never. You're remembering wrong. We beat them in the great war. They wouldn't dare come after us again."

"They do, and they win. You don’t have the troops and you don’t have the weapons.”

“We have the entire Maginot Line defending us,” he argues.

I bite my lip, struggling to remember the little I know about France’s fall to Germany at the start of World War II. I wish I’d studied it a bit more. “It doesn’t hold. They’re going to cut through the north instead. Somewhere mountainous. Avon? Ardent?”

“Ardennes,” he says quietly, the truth finally sinking it as he realizes that I only know this because it’s become an important part of the past. “What happens then?”

“France will be occupied by the Germans for the entire war. They take over your homes, steal your livestock.” I could say so much more right now, but the truth of what will come is so gruesome it will seem impossible to them. Right now what matters is that they believe me and do what’s necessary to survive. “What I’m saying is, if you're capable of leaving right now, you should. Go to the United States, or if you insist on staying in France, head south. I think that’s where the French government went, anyway."

They both look stricken. This hint I've dropped was far more than either of them expected.

"We can't leave," says Marie. "What if our mother comes home? How will we know? How will she find us?"

I’d expected an argument from Henri, but not her. “Marie,” I plead, “be reasonable. Do you really think this is what your mother would want? You stuck in this house with a bunch of German soldiers leering at you?”

She raises her chin. “What I know is that until I’m sure my mother isn’t coming home, I’m not leaving this farm.”

I look toward her brother, hoping he’ll hear what I’m saying and persuade her. But his jaw is locked tight. He knows it’s a lost cause.

"Then we need to prepare to fight," he says.

Our eyes hold and I'm possessed by a sudden urge to weep. He will die here. He was a small child during the last war, but he is exactly the sort who dies when his country is attacked, who will climb the roof of his barn when Nazis come to take his home and will care about nothing beyond killing as many as he can before they catch him. He has no sense of self-preservation.