Page 77 of Across Time

The spark of irritation I felt flares into something else, something far greater than I remember ever feeling with him. "So you're suggesting that instead of graduating from an Ivy League college in one year, less than a year actually, I should give it up to become a receptionist somewhere?"

He exhales heavily, pushing a hand through his hair. “I already said you don't have to work. You can stay at my place, hang out, and start at Columbia when your transfer comes through. It'll give you a whole year to plan a wedding. Women love that shit."

I pull my hand away and turn to face him. "You could have gotten a job anywhere. If it's so important that we're in the same place, get a job in Philadelphia."

He rolls his eyes. "Get real, Sarah," he says. "I just got hired by JP Morgan. I'm not moving to Philadelphia.”

I stare at him, thinking Henri would never ask this of me. What did he say when I told him Mark had asked me to move? If what was best for the woman I loved was for her to stay where she was, the one thing I’d never do is ask her to give it up.

I picture Henri’s face on the last night we were together. The longing I saw there, and his refusal to act on it. And again when he kissed me in the field that day…looking at me as if my presence was a miracle, as if I was all he’d ever wanted.

I picture it, and am suddenly struck hard by a thought. What if the reason he kept silent wasn’t because he didn’t care enough, but because he cared so much that he wanted what was best for me, rather than what was best for him? What if he didn’t kiss me because things were going to change between us, but because he thought I’d chosen, on my own, to return to him? That I was there to give him the things he refused to ask for—my heart and a life that could be spent much more safely and comfortably in my own time.

The thought makes my breath stop. God, I want it to be true. And the more I let the possibility crash through my brain, the more likely it seems.

Mark sighs and steps close to me, placing his hands on my waist. “I’m sorry I said it like that. I just love you so much that I don’t want to be away from you, okay? But tonight is special. We don’t have to figure it all out now.”

Exactly, says the old version of me. Just find a way to make this work. But there’s a new voice now, a louder one, that insists otherwise. I remove his hands and take a step backward.

“I disagree. I think this is definitely a conversation we need to have right now.”

I see irritation flicker across his face again. “Jesus, Sarah,” he says, pushing a hand through his hair. “Since when are you so argumentative? I want you in New York because I love you and I don’t want to be away from you. Why is that suddenly a crime?”

“Pushing me to give up what I want isn’t love.”

His mouth falls open. “I thought what you wanted was me.”

I look at him, at his handsome, incredulous face. He’s right. He’s right to think that what I wanted was him, because for our entire relationship, he did matter more than anything else. Or maybe not him, but the life I saw with him—one where I could be a different person, a person I didn’t hate quite so much.

Except, I realize suddenly: I’m already that person.

I’m not sure when it changed. Maybe it was all those weeks watching Marie use her gifts to help her neighbors, to make all of our lives slightly better ones. Maybe it was finally admitting my role in Kit’s death, and seeing for the first time that my guilt is normal, and human, and a burden my mother should have shared.

But mostly I think it was Henri. It was being seen by him as I am, and being loved for it.

Mark doesn’t see me as I am, and whatever it is he thinks he cares for…it isn’t me.

“I’m sorry,” I tell him. “I changed this summer. And I think I might be in love with someone else.”

* * *

Mark argues. He gets mad, and then upset, and after a minute or two of this the limousine pulls up and the driver steps out.

“Madame Boudon thought you might be ready to leave.”

Mark stares at him and then glares at me. “Who the fuck is Madame Boudon?”

“Possibly my only living friend in this country,” I reply. I throw my arms around him, whispering one last apology in his ear, and then I climb into the back of the car and begin to weep.

How stupid I was. How impossibly stupid I was.

I'm in love with Henri in a way you never find twice.

I don't merely lust for his pretty face and his full mouth and the broad shoulders I used to watch from afar. I adore him, and even if it means I’ll do nothing more than sit on the periphery of his life and exist near him, I’d agree. I will gladly milk cows and cook and hang the laundry and all of the other tasks I complained about so vehemently, just for the gift of his sudden smile, his surprised laugh.

I’m still not certain Henri wants me there for good. I could return to 1938 to discover I misinterpreted everything he ever did and said. And even if he does want me, returning will be terrible in more ways than I can name. I won’t finish my degree. There will be rationing and hunger. I might die in the process, and he might too. And the next time I come to 1987, I’ll be an old woman, if I reach it at all.

But in the end it comes down to a simple truth, one that matters more than all of the other truths: I don't want to exist in a world where he is not.