Page 45 of Across Eternity

There’s a fiction we tell ourselves when we’re saying goodbye to someone we love. We always pretend there will be another time, because it would be too painful to acknowledge it’s the last. But I want to feel the pain of my answer, because I think it might haunt me less to get it out of the way right now. “No,” I tell him. “I won’t be coming back.”

The ride home is mostly silent, beautiful and also painful. One last chance to be with him, knowing what we had before wasn’t all a lie, and knowing it’s going to end. “What are you thinking?” he asks as we turn onto the side road that leads to the farm.

I lean my face against the window. It’s surprisingly cool. “I wasn’t thinking, really. I was just pretending this is how it would always be.” His hand reaches for mine before he realizes what he’s doing and pulls it back.

“It’s what I’ve done every time we’re alone,” he says.

He turns toward the farm and we both see it at the same time. It’s late, but every light in the house is on. We exchange a shocked glance. Something is very wrong.

Marie-Therese is out the door the moment we climb from the car, tugging at her hair the same way Henri does when he’s beyond upset. “Mon Dieu! I told you not to go after her!” she screams. “The baby is coming. Go get the doctor!”

He takes one last glance at me, and then he is gone.

* * *

Inside Yvette is screaming. Not that she ever struck me as the stoic type, but her face is lined with agony right now. “Make it stop,” she begs, again and again. She hardly seems to notice us, but when her eyes fall on me she flails in the bed. “Get her out! I don’t want her in here.”

I walk from the room, pacing in front of the windows, waiting for the sight of Henri’s car. I’m torn. I can’t wish ill upon a child, especially not a child of Henri’s. But the baby is early, and I’m not sure how he’ll fare here, without an incubator and oxygen and whatever else preemies need, and if the baby doesn’t survive…would Henri stay married?

I squeeze my eyes shut, trying not to think it, trying not to allow that secret hopeful piece of me to exist. I need to be better than that.

“Shouldn’t we take her to a hospital?” I ask Marie when she steps out of the room. “The baby is six weeks early. You’re not equipped for that here.”

“A hospital?” Marie asks with an unhappy laugh. “The nearest one is in Reims. Even if we had enough petrol to get there, I doubt we’d make it in time.”

My jaw tightens. “I didn’t ask him to come after me, if that’s what you’re trying to imply.”

She sighs. “Of course not. You’ve done so much for us. And you’re doing so much by remaining under these circumstances. It’s him. Henri. He’s about to be a father. He can’t go running off to Paris after a girl like a schoolboy.”

Which he did because of me. The birth must be why Cecelia insisted I stay…but why? As far as I can tell, I’ve only made things worse.

Henri arrives moments later with the doctor, who goes into Yvette’s room with Marie and shuts the door behind them. Henri turns to me, with the weight of the world on his shoulders. “It’s too soon,” he says, slumping into the chair beside mine and placing his head in his hands. “The child won’t live.”

“He might,” I reply. But all I can think of is JFK’s first son, who will be born more than a decade from now, six weeks early, and will not survive because his lungs aren’t developed.

“I’ve made such a mess of things,” he whispers. “I’m not sure how it’s possible for one man to make as many mistakes as I have, and to potentially ruin as many lives without trying.”

My heart twists. Only a few years ago, he was at Oxford with a magnificent future ahead of him. He’s tried to do the right thing, again and again, even with Yvette, and his life has detonated instead. I live in a time where every teenager and college kid expects good things, and even expects the bad to be followed by good. But how can I promise Henri it will all work out when I know what lies ahead?

My hands reach out to surround his. “Don’t lose hope just yet,” I tell him. It’s the best I can do.

It seems only a few minutes later that Yvette’s cries stop, and, after a half-second of silence, we hear it: a tiny, fledging wail, warbling and pathetic. Henri jumps to his feet, and rushes to the door. When it opens, Marie is smiling. “You have a daughter,” she says with tears in her eyes. Henri’s eyes hold mine for a moment, scared and hopeful and apologetic before he follows her into the room.

I breathe deep, brushing a hand over my dress as I rise and go to the family room. This is a time for family, and I’m not family. Now, especially. Marie and Henri share a blood link to Yvette. Their loyalties will be to her and the baby. It’s how it should be, and maybe that makes this the perfect time to leave. No drama, no weeping goodbyes. A chapter that ends just as a far more exciting one opens.

My chest hurts at the thought of it, but I wanted to know what it was like to love someone so deeply that it felt like I couldn’t breathe when he walked into the room, and I got it. I will never have this again, I know. But I had it once—how many people can say that?

I’m writing them a note when Dr. Nadeau and Henri exit the room, Henri carrying a tiny white bundle so small it hardly seems possible there might be a baby inside. I walk toward them gingerly.

“A girl,” he says to me with awed eyes, so full of love already for this tiny thing. His life has moved on, as it should. And if I care about him at all, I need to let him have this moment, not ruin it with my bitterness.

I force myself to smile, though all I really want to do is weep. “Congratulations. Do you have a name?”

He shakes his head. “Perhaps Rose, after our mother, but I have to discuss it with Yvette when she wakes.”

Doctor Nadeau hoists his bag and frowns. “She is very early, and very small. You’ll need to be extremely careful with her if she’s to survive the next few months. Constant tiny meals. Her stomach is too small to hold enough yet. And if she stops breathing, use the pump I gave Marie-Therese. She’ll show you how to use it.”

The possibility that she might stop breathing is enough to make me take a step backward. In spite of all the death I witnessed in 1918, it’s not those women I picture…it’s my sister, being carried out of the lake. And I don’t want to live through that again. I don’t want to be at fault if it all goes wrong.