Page 80 of Across Eternity

“I know you,” he says. “You’re Durand’s whore. And if you mean to threaten me by showing up like this, let me assure you I don’t take threats kindly.”

I pull Cece closer to my chest, my heart hammering hard. With her here, I can’t do any of the things I’d like to right now. “I’m not threatening you. I want to know where my husband is.”

He looks me over again, head-to-toe. “He’s not your husband, as I recall. He’s someone else’s. He didn’t even try to get papers for you, you know.”

Anger makes my vision begin to cut in around the edges. “Answer the question,” I reply between gritted teeth. “Where is he?”

“There’s been no word,” he replies. “I’m assuming that means he failed and got them all killed, but you’d need to ask my contact in Paris to be certain.”

Killed. I restrain my desire to shudder. He’s not dead. Maybe he’s captured, but he’s not dead. He can’t be.

“Well, in order to speak to anyone in Paris, I’ll need those travel papers you promised.”

He arches a brow. “I agreed to create those papers in exchange for a job he has not yet done. When the airmen reach England, then he shall have his papers.” His eyes roam over me. “Unless you’d like to strike another sort of deal.”

Rage boils in my blood. This man is risking Henri’s life but won’t hold up his side of the bargain, though it will cost him nothing. “I’m not striking another sort of deal with a man who still hasn’t honored the first one.”

He grasps my elbow and pulls me to the door. “Then we have nothing to discuss. Come here again and I’ll see that you regret it.”

The door slams behind me and I stand for a moment, feeling the pulse of fury in my brain, the desire to destroy. Cece is heavy in my arms, reminding me how ill she is—not since she was a newborn could she have slept through an exchange like that one. I place her in the pram and force myself onward, to the queue at the grocer’s.

If Roche knew who he was dealing with, I think, he wouldn’t have been so high-handed. And God knows I’m tempted to show him.

I reach the grocer’s just as the sun is rising. The women in line eye me with suspicion. In better times, they were friendly enough, but now I’m the worst of all possible things—a homewrecker, an American, and tainted by association with the Durands. The only way I could make it worse at this point is if I were also a Nazi, and then at least they wouldn’t be openly rude. Claudette Loison, the girl who fancied Henri so much back in the day, is among them. She whispers to the woman behind her and then turns back toward me. “Whore,” she mouths, so I can see.

I’m not someone you want to trifle with, I think, and then force my gaze to Cecelia—a visible reminder that I must be level-headed right now, my best self. I get our things and proceed to the butcher’s. His wife offers me canned sardines and I lean toward her so I won’t be overheard. “Is there anything else you might be able to spare for fifteen francs?”

Her eyebrows go up. “Since when do the Durands have fifteen francs to spend?” she asks.

I’d almost forgotten Henri’s charade of being poor. “They still don’t,” I reply. “But I do.”

She gives me an almost imperceptible nod. “I can give you a ham. My husband will meet you in the back.”

Within a few minutes, I’m on way with a ham wrapped in paper beneath my arm. The basket is heavy but when I picture how delighted Lucien and Charlotte will be with my haul it all seems worthwhile.

I walk along the main road, ignoring the eyes on me as I pass, and breathe a sigh of relief as I turn toward the farm. Finally out of sight, I set the basket down, rubbing the welt it’s left on my inner arm.

“Nearly there,” I tell Cecelia, who looks up at me with pale eyes, more listless than she was even when we left. I slide my finger against her palm, and her hand tightens around it, a reflex. “When we get home, I’ll mash you up an apple and some ham and you’ll be right as rain.” My voice cracks on the last word. I no longer believe my promises to her.

I reach for the basket, and straighten, but just as I do, something slams into the back of my head. The pain makes the world go black, and I fall. It’s impossible to think, to understand what’s happened. For a moment I don’t remember where I am.

Cecelia.

Panic has me struggling to push my face up from the ground. My sight returns but I’m so dizzy that my stomach rolls as I climb to my feet. Cecelia is still in her pram, thank God, but my basket and the ham are gone.

I sway, trying to make sense of it. Until this moment, I thought it must be an accident. A falling branch, perhaps. But it was intentional. A hit hard enough to kill me. Whoever ran off didn’t care that he was leaving an infant here to freeze while her mother bled to death on the ground.

That rage—simmering for weeks—boils over, staining everything, spilling poison in my brain. Not just for my assailant, but for all of them: the Nazis, the French police doing their dirty work, the women in town whispering slights as I walked past. Monsieur Roche and this job he’s made Henri do. Jeannette and Marie for leaving. Doctor Nadeau for refusing to help us.

Right now, my capacity for harm may exceed anything my grandfather or aunt ever dreamed of. I want to kill everyone who has ever hurt us, though I’d settle for jumping back in time a few minutes and teaching whoever struck me the most painful lesson he’s ever endured.

Except the children are at home unattended and Cecelia needs to get inside. Focus, I tell myself. You have to put them first.

My hands shake as they wrap around the handles of the pram and I begin to limp home. My ears still ring from the hit and my vision remains slightly blurred. I haven’t touched the back of my head but it feels wet.

I get to the farm and walk in the door to find the bookcase on its side and broken. Charlotte and Lucien are both crying but unharmed, and I want to cry too.

What am I going to do? How am I going to get us out of this mess?