Page 113 of Across Eternity

My eyes shut and the pain leaves as I sink somewhere heavy and dreamless. But Sarah is tucked against my chest. Our children are safe and we are together.

She’s right. It’s enough.

* * *

I wake slowly, eyes blinking against the bright sun. I see a small stone house and a barn, similar to ours but not quite the same, surrounded by a vineyard, one that’s flourishing in the summer air. For a moment I think I’m back in Saint Antoine—that I’ve fallen asleep in the orchard as I occasionally did—until I look in the distance, where I see a tall white steeple and the bright, clear blue of the sea.

I’m on an island. And I think of it then, my mother’s stories about the mythical island where we’d all be reunited one day. I mostly thought it was a fairy tale...but was it?

Wherever I am, though, I don’t want to be here without my wife.

I push off the ground, realizing the pain in my back, in my chest…is gone, as if it never was. I lift my shirt. There are no wounds from the bullets that entered my chest, no scar from the knife that cut me when I was held captive, but the marks of my childhood remain—a small white line on my thumb from an accident with a saw, a burn mark on my inner wrist.

It’s not as if I’ve died and been made perfect. It’s as if I’ve simply returned to some earlier time.

“Sarah?” I call, starting toward the small stone house. Something crashes inside the barn. A sound much like the one Sarah made when she first came to us.

I run toward it this time, and enter to find Sarah standing before me, naked and confused. She looks exactly as she did that first day, but when her eyes raise to mine, I see everything I’d hoped to in her face. Love and the start of a joy she’s terrified to let herself feel.

“Is this real?” she asks, her voice barely a whisper. “Is it really you?”

I take three long steps to pull her into my arms. I just saw her, and yet it feels as if we’ve been apart a very long time. “Yes.”

She begins crying, face pressed tight to my chest. “I’ve missed you so much. Every day and night for more years than you can imagine.”

And even though it seems to me no time has passed, I feel something coming together inside me, a hole that is finally closed. Nothing in my life has ever felt warmer or sweeter than this, her pressed against me, solid and real.

“Are we—” She looks around, at the untidy barn and the roof that sorely needs repair above us. “Are we in heaven?”

I smile. “I don’t think so. There’s a church down the way and surely in heaven, church is beside the point. I think we’re on the island. The one from my mother’s stories.”

“I wasn’t sure,” she weeps. “I didn’t know if it would work out like the twins said.”

I freeze. “The twins?” I ask. “Did we have twins?”

She laughs through her tears. “No, our daughter did, or is about to anyway. Quinn’s the product of two first families, and Nick—her husband—is the product of the other two, I’m certain. And the twins are the circle of light. From the prophecy.”

“And it all happened because of you,” I say, my hands framing her face.

“It happened because of us,” she replies.

I lean down and kiss her. I don’t want to stop. My mouth presses to her jaw, to her temples, to her cheeks. She is too warm and real to be a dream. “Please tell me this isn’t going to end.”

“I don’t think so,” she replies. “I think maybe we’re in a place where time works differently, a time that existed before our deaths. And now we’re waiting for our granddaughters to set the world right.”

“But I can’t time travel,” I argue. “You might be able to go back in time, but how did I?”

“I don’t know. That’s a mystery for Quinn and her daughters to solve,” she says. “But you can always ask the twins yourself when they come visit us.”

“Visit? Here?” I ask, kissing her again. “Nothing you’re saying is making sense.”

Her smile is so joyful it makes me ache. “I suspect we have a very long time to go over the details.”

I push her hair back from her face. “Yes. But my wife is naked, and we appear to have this entire place to ourselves. That’s enough for me right now.”

She goes on her toes and presses her lips to mine. “Then take me inside, and let’s begin our next chapter.”

THE END