Page 29 of Across Time

I’m smiling, remembering it, when my body lightens, and a breeze rustles around me. My eyes fly open suddenly to find that my arms are translucent. Half here and half gone. I force myself back into the terrible present, my heart beating hard. If I hadn’t stopped myself, I’d have landed somewhere on my bad ankles, the cast left behind with my clothes. So it’s absolutely critical that it not happen again, but what’s shocking is that it happened at all. I haven’t accidentally time traveled since I was young—twelve or thirteen, perhaps—and I can’t believe it nearly happened now.

And happened when I was thinking about Henri, of all things.

* * *

Tender is the Night deserves to be Fitzgerald’s least popular novel. If I thought all Americans were as annoying as his characters, I’d avoid the country entirely. I’m forcing myself to read it when Henri comes out to the porch with the crutches in one hand and two small glasses of wine in the other, one of which he hands to me.

“My sister said you were churlish this afternoon and need loosening up."

I groan, loudly. Churlish? Really? "Did you suggest she might be churlish too if she had a life-threatening injury I refused to fix?"

His mouth turns up at one corner. "Life-threatening? Is that what we’re calling a broken ankle now?”

“Maybe it’s not my life that’s in peril,” I reply, glancing inside at Marie while I take a sip off the glass he's handed me. I don’t even like wine, but I need something to take the edge off my anger. “I don’t know what I’m going to do if my ankle isn’t healed when it’s supposed to be.”

He takes the seat across from mine. “What precisely do you need to rush home for?”

I sigh. I’m sure the truth will only confirm what he already thinks about me—that I’m a liar, a fraud. Whatever. “My pretend internship is ending on August 12th—I said it to buy myself extra time here just in case—Mark is supposed to be meeting me in Paris right after that and I might not even be there.”

He takes a sip of his wine. “I still don’t understand why you felt you had to lie to such an extreme,” he says. “Especially to your mother. She already doesn’t approve of you, so why keep trying?”

I’m not sure if I’m frustrated by his lack of understanding, or if I just don’t like that there’s some truth to what he’s saying. “Because I still have a chance of fixing this,” I reply. “I’m trying not to use my gift, and once I stop…she’ll know. She’ll be able to tell. And then maybe…” I don’t complete the sentence because it’s too goddamn pathetic to be said aloud. “I don’t know.”

“Your parents won’t be suspicious when you go through the entire summer without calling them?”

I flush. That I can’t make my parents care still feels like a personal failing, no matter what I tell myself. “My father left when I was twelve and I never heard from him again,” I reply stiffly. He contacted Steven, but never me. More proof that I was flawed and that what I did was unforgivable. “And my mother…well, she’d prefer not to hear from me. When I call, she just tries to get off the phone anyway.”

He's watching me again, and before he’s even opened his mouth, I know I’ll regret having told him so much. It’s more than I’ve ever said to Mark, and I have no idea why I suddenly decided to be so regrettably open about my family.

“Is she really worth all this, then?” he asks. “All the lies, just trying to earn her respect? She doesn’t sound like much of a mother.”

But she’s all I have, I want to say. It’s not true, of course. I have Mark. I have my brother. But that’s different. Mark has no idea what I am, and Steven only has the vaguest understanding of it. It’s my mother who knows, who was raised among time travelers and truly realizes how much harm it can do. Persuading her that I’m not evil might allow me to persuade myself.

“Her respect is the only thing I’ve ever wanted.”

His nod is small and in his eyes I see what looks an awful lot like pity. I wanted him to agree with me and it scares me that he doesn’t. Maybe there’s absolutely nothing I can do to win her over—no job, degree or spouse capable of fixing it. Perhaps even giving up my ability won’t be enough, because what I want even more than her respect is her love, and there might be something inside me that just makes that impossible.

He runs a hand through his hair and releases a heavy sigh. "I’m sorry. I know this isn’t how you would choose to spend a summer.”

For the first time in hours, I manage to feel bad for someone other than myself. I know he feels guilty about what happened and I’m not going to make him feel worse. "It’s not that," I reply. "I'm just going crazy, sitting here like this all day. But the crutches will help. Thank you for those.”

He’s lost in thought for a moment and then glances at me. "Do you ride?"

"Horses?"

He laughs a little. Of course he means horses. "Yes. I could take you riding. You just have to promise you can keep your seat."

"I grew up on a farm. I can keep my seat."

"You said you could milk a cow too, as I recall,” he counters. “But tomorrow then, we will ride, though only after Marie-Therese is gone. I wouldn't want to give her the impression that you’re enjoying this."

We both glance inside at her, still humming and working on her pie. I never thought I’d see the day when Henri and I were united against something. And I definitely never thought that thing would be Marie.

13

The next morning after Marie has left for the school, Henri returns to the house, handing me a small pair of trousers and a shirt he's dug out of the trunks in the attic. Once I've struggled to pull the pants over the cast, I hobble to the door where Fleur, the calmer of their two horses, awaits.

I lean the crutches against the door as he comes to lift me into the saddle. "Are you sure you're up to this?” I ask. “As I recall, you said I was heavier than I looked."