Page 84 of Across Time

"Believe me," he says grimly, "if you remain here, a child or two is almost a certainty. No matter how careful we are, there are going to be many, many times when we are not. And there’s something else I need to tell you before this goes any further.”

I place a hand over my stomach, waiting once more for pain. “You’ve been dating that girl from the church,” I say quietly. “Claudette?”

His brow furrows. “Claudette?” He gives a short, abrupt laugh. “No. I wish that’s all it was. I have a feeling it’s very different where you’re from, but here, in this time, people are less tolerant of differences. You probably wondered why the Beauvoirs didn’t even consider Marie for André?”

I nod. I wondered it many times, actually.

He sighs. “It’s because of our mother.”

My jaw drops. “They knew she was a time traveler?”

“No,” he says, his tongue darting out to wet his lips. “They knew she was Jewish.”

My jaw remains open. Stunned. How, in all the time I was here, could they not have mentioned it? “Not a particularly devout one obviously, as she married a Catholic and raised us as such,” he continues. “But the town has a long memory.”

My eyes close. Will that matter during the war? Will it be enough to get them sent to a concentration camp? If I’d known, I’d have pushed them so much harder than I did to leave.

“I’m sorry,” Henri says formally, rising from the bed. “I didn’t realize it would matter to you.”

I quickly grab his hand and pull him back to me. “Of course it doesn’t. But…it may matter once the war starts, to all of us. I just don’t know what the Germans consider Jewish by law.”

He rests back against the bed frame and I lay my head on his chest. “Unfortunately I do know the answer to that,” he says. “They’ve already decided it. Something called the Mischling test. If you’ve got even one Jewish grandparent you’re removed from civil service in Germany. If that changes your mind about this, I understand.”

I shake my head. “No, of course it doesn’t.” But it changes other things. It makes the odds that he and Marie-Therese will survive the war that much worse. It means any child we have could end up in a concentration camp too. When I was warning them about the war, I was so focused on their personal safety I didn’t even mention the extermination of the Jews, when it turns out to be the most important piece of information I could give them.

God, this whole thing just got so much worse.

“I need to tell you more about what’s coming,” I say quietly. “And then we are going to make a plan.”

30

When Marie gets home around lunch, Henri looks nearly as sheepish as I do. I’m fairly certain if there’s some kind of record for the number of times two people can have sex in twenty-four hours, we just demolished it.

She looks from one of us to the other. “I assume it’s safe to enter?”

Henri’s hand slides through mine. “Relatively, yes.”

“And I take it you’re staying?” she asks with a broad smile.

I exchange a look with Henri. "More or less,” I reply with a sigh. “Henri thought I should go home during the war, and I disagreed. So we’ve decided to compromise.”

She looks between the two of us uncertainly. “Compromise?”

Henri runs a hand through his hair. “I want to know that, if nothing else, Amelie has the ability to escape if she needs to. So she’ll stay here, but return to her own time as often as necessary, just so she doesn’t lose the ability to jump at all.”

“And once the war is over,” I add, “I will remain here for good.”

Henri’s hand brushes against mine. We’ve intentionally left out an important part of our agreement—the most important part: sometime over the next year, the three of us will relocate to the United States. I didn’t want to spring this on her upon my arrival, but soon we’ll have to tell her. Their safety, with a Jewish mother, depends on it.

But only if they’ve already made it through the war, a voice whispers in my head.

Henri’s fingers twine through mine and I squeeze them hard. I won’t lose him. I won’t lose either of them. Somehow.

* * *

With Marie-Therese back in the house, Henri and I reluctantly acknowledge that it’s time we return to something akin to normal life. He leaves the house to do the chores he’s neglected for days, his gaze lingering on my face before he walks out the door. The moment it shuts, Marie pounces on me.

“So…?” she asks, eyes bright with excitement. “How was it?”