Page 19 of Across Eternity

She pulls me into a room and I grab her hard, trying to stay upright, angry all over again. “How many men?” I demand. “How many men here?”

She presses against me. “Only you. You’re the first. Kiss me. Show your Sarah you forgive her.”

My little thief. My little lying thief. I don’t care what she’s done. I don’t care who she’s become. I will love whatever she is now. I bury my face in her hair. “I love you so much. I should never have let you leave.”

“I’m here now, darling,” she says.

“I thought you were dead,” I whisper. “I thought you were dead.”

She rubs my back. “I’m here now.” She pulls up her dress. “Show me how much you’ve missed me.”

* * *

I wake in the morning covered in my own vomit, head pounding in a way that makes me long for death, until I remember it. Sarah.

She came to me last night. Though the light makes me feel as if I’ll throw up once more, I force myself to sit. Was it a dream? I found her bones yesterday, but last night…it seems every bit as real. The room is empty but my pants are folded neatly on a chair. A woman’s brush sits on the chest of drawers beside it.

Despite my hangover, my heart begins to hammer in my chest. Was she really here all along? Why didn’t she come to me? I’d have let her go, if that’s what she wanted, but how could she have let me believe—

The door opens. And the disappointment hits me so hard I feel undone by it. The woman who enters is blonde, like Sarah, perhaps shares a passing resemblance to her, but nothing more.

“Awake at last,” she says with a cheerful smile. “You had quite a night, didn’t you?”

She’s not Sarah, but she’s also nothing like what I thought last night. She wears no makeup and her dress is modest. She is nothing like the coquettish woman I accused of being a whore. Maybe I dreamed all of it. I hope I did.

“Why am I here?” I ask. “Who are you?”

She gives me a shy smile. “I’d hoped to be more memorable than that.”

I press my face to my hands. I’m going to be sick. “I thought you were someone else,” I reply, wincing through the pounding in my head.

She perches beside me on the bed. “Your wife? She left you?”

It hits me hard, the truth. Until yesterday, I could hope Sarah would come back. And now that hope is gone.

“Something like that,” I reply. I grit my teeth to force the words out.

The girl takes my hand. “I’m sorry that happened,” she says. “But I’m here for you now.”

The pain of it all makes me long for death. The pain in my head, the desperate need to vomit, the disappointment of discovering it wasn’t Sarah with me last night. That less than twenty-four hours after discovering she is gone I’ve already been untrue to her memory. I push the hand away, cross the room to my clothes.

“I’m sorry,” I tell the girl. “I need to get home.”

12

SARAH

The final child, another girl, is born. Which means there isn’t much time.

I continue to care for the babies. I name them A and B. I’m worried if I give them real names, they’ll become harder to let go of.

There’s a false sense of safety, sitting in the rocking chair alone with these two tiny infants, but I know that it will all end soon. I walk through the plan, all day long, looking for loopholes. There are many, of course, but I’ve got nothing better, and no more time to waste.

That night, as Mathilde and I prepare dinner, I broach the topic with my heart hammering loud in my chest. “Do you really think all those staff members just left at the same time?” I ask.

She looks at me sharply, nostrils flaring. “They were dismissed. What are you trying to say?”

I meet her eye. “I’m trying to say it’s a dangerous place to work. If they don’t mind killing us, they won’t mind killing you either.”