Page 91 of Across Time

Perhaps it would be better to do nothing, but I already know I’m not capable of it. I can’t watch them marched off to a concentration camp while I simply hope they survive it.

I wait until evening to broach the topic.

“You need to make Jeannette leave,” I tell Marie over dinner. “It’s not safe for her and the kids.”

Marie shrugs. “If it’s safe enough for us to stay, I’m sure it’s safe for Jeannette too.”

My eyes meet Henri’s and he nods slowly, his hand sliding into mine. It’s time to tell Marie the plans we’ve made.

“Marie,” he says, “we need to talk you about something. We’re moving.”

Her eyes go wide. “You are? Where? This is your home.”

“I meant all three of us,” he amends. “We have some time, but next spring, next summer at the latest, we need to leave for the United States.”

“Leave?” she gasps. “Why?”

“It’s not safe here,” I whisper. “Truly, it isn’t. Especially for you and Henri. If I’d known about your mother, I’d have been on my hands and knees begging you to leave when I was here before. Hitler doesn’t just dislike the Jews. He will do his level best to eradicate them.”

“That won’t happen here, though. And we are practicing Catholics,” she insists.

From my perspective her stance seems insane, but I understand it. If someone swore to me back home that all the people in my town or my college were about to be annihilated, I’d have struggled to believe it, regardless of the source.

“I’m not sure it will matter. War brings out the best and the worst in people. And there’s always someone who will inform on you just to get a leg up. Always. Do you really think that André Beauvoir won’t be the first to tell the Nazis your mother was Jewish if he sees a benefit to it?”

Her jaw sets. “Even if that’s true, I can’t leave. What if my mother comes back looking for us? She'll have no idea where we went."

Henri’s shoulders sag. “Marie…she’s not coming back. You know this. She’s had two decades to get back to us if she was going to.”

“But she might escape!” exclaims Marie. “Perhaps she’s been held somewhere and when the war comes she’ll escape at last, and return to an empty home.”

Henri slumps at the table, running frustrated hands through his hair. "We've gone over this so many times. This obsession with waiting for her to come home…it’s just your way of avoiding the truth. If you don’t care for your own life, think of mine, and Amelie’s, and any children we might have over the next seven years. Are you willing to risk all of us just so you don’t have to face facts?”

She lifts her chin. “Then go without me. I’m not asking you to stay behind.”

Henri shakes his head. “The one thing that will not happen is you remaining here on your own.”

Her arms fold. “I’ve stayed here and led this quiet little life, as you and Maman wanted. I’ve done everything you’ve asked. But I’m an adult now, and I won’t be pushed into doing something that isn’t right for me. So I won’t leave, not until I know for certain she’s gone.”

His eyes meet mine, tight with worry, when even he can’t fully realize how bad things might be. Unless I can change Marie’s mind, I know one thing for certain: the odds of us surviving the coming years just got dramatically worse.

* * *

Marie barely speaks for the rest of the afternoon. She chops vegetables for the bouillabaisse with a ferocity that scares me.

“You got to decide,” she says out of nowhere. “You decided to come here, to go home, to come back. You decided you wanted to go to college, and you decided you would leave. All I’m asking is for the right to decide for myself to remain in my home. Nothing more.”

I get the feeling her resentment has been brewing for a long time. Not at me, necessarily, but at the lot she’s been dealt. Watching me flit around and do as I please probably hasn’t helped, and now she’s stuck here, lovesick for Father Edouard while Henri and I bask in our relationship. It must seem unbelievably unfair.

“You’re right,” I tell her. “And I’d feel the same way. But this isn’t the only chance you’ll have to make a decision for yourself. You have your entire life ahead to decide whatever you want.”

She shakes her head vehemently. “My entire life has been ahead. All of these things that will be possible later—when exactly do they happen? When does Henri decide we don’t need to hide ourselves? When do I get to make my own decisions?”

I don’t know what to tell her, because it won’t be any time in the near future. “Give me the knife,” I say, “before you cut your finger off.”

She sets the knife down entirely and pulls off her apron. “I’m going to town. Which appears to be the only decision I’m allowed to make on my own.”

I watch in silence as she walks out the door. When I was a child I always thought that in any argument someone was right and someone was wrong. As an adult I realize that often isn’t the case, and it certainly isn’t here. Marie deserves to make her own choices, but her brother should be allowed to do what’s necessary to keep his family safe.