Page 105 of Across Eternity

Marie is lying on her side, her feet next to my hip. “What do you think the home in Limoges is like?” she asks.

Henri’s smile tips up at the corners. “I don’t care, as long as my wife and I no longer need to share a room with you all.”

Marie laughs. “She’s over seven months pregnant, Henri. You’ll have no need for privacy for quite some time, believe me.”

His eyes meet mine and hold. I bite down on a smile, just before a thud from the corner of the room draws my attention.

A naked woman is on our floor, on her hands and knees.

I freeze, some piece of me realizing what must be happening before I’ve put it all together.

Me. The woman on the floor is me. And I’d only be jumping backward like this to give us a warning.

“Go,” she says, her chest heaving. “Go now.”

Henri rushes over and kneels in front of her. “What happened?”

“Two days from now,” she says, looking at me. “You will go to the cigar shop and they’ll tell you your sister was already there, a girl with eyes just like yours.”

All the breath leaves my chest and I lean forward, holding tight to Cecelia. “Eyes like mine means a time traveler,” I whisper.

She nods. “She was demanding to know when the papers would be ready. She insisted that you were leaving the next morning—which means she knows ahead of you the day you will go.”

The bedspread twists beneath my hand. “So we have to get out now, ahead of her.”

She nods. “Even that may not be enough. There are a thousand ways she can find us.”

Henri and I stare at each other. “We’ll just have to go without the papers,” he says.

“But how?” I ask. “It’s daylight. You can’t be seen at all, and someone is going to ask for identification, whether we walk or take the train.”

He drags a hand through his hair. “I’ll ask Genevieve for the truck,” he says. “Get the children ready.”

He runs for the stairs and already the naked me on the floor is vanishing, which means we’ve changed how things go two days from now. I just hope we’re changing them for the better.

Marie and I exchange a worried glance. “There’s something we’re missing,” she says. I’ve never seen her so pale and worried.

“What do you mean?”

“She can time travel, but we’re acting as if she’s human. It can’t be this easy to escape her.”

I tug at my hair. “I know,” I whisper. Whatever is wrong with this plan, I’m too panicked right now to figure out what it is.

I help the children with their shoes, while Marie stares sightlessly out the dormer windows. “Marie, can you pack our things?” I ask, but she doesn’t even seem to hear me. Genevieve and Henri come in just as we’re done. “The truck isn’t here,” he says. “It won’t return from Limoges until tomorrow.”

I stare at him. “I don’t know what to do.”

“Just wait,” says Genevieve. “I’m sure this—”

That’s when we hear it—the pounding at the front door. Henri and I look at each other, and I see it then, the failure in our plan. “She’s always going to know when we leave,” I tell him, feeling faint suddenly and leaning against the wall for support. “She got her information from some point in the future, and each time we change the plan, the information she received, the dates that led her here...they change too. She knows it as soon as we do.”

The pounding on the door increases.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about but they’re about to break down the door,” says Genevieve. “You need to get out of here. Leave through the basement. In the closet you’ll see what looks like an air vent. Behind it is a tunnel which will lead you across the street.”

“And from there?” I ask.

She meets my gaze, her face bleak. “From there you run.”