Page 81 of Across Eternity

“Your head is bleeding,” Charlotte says through her tears.

I know she’s talking about the cut, but it feels like so much more than that.

* * *

I don’t normally pray and I’m not even sure what I believe in, at this point, but once the children are in bed that night I fall to my bruised knees and beg anyone listening for help. “Please help Cece get better. Show me what to do for her. Please bring Henri home and help us find a way to get out of here.” I ask and ask, but when I’m done the house is silent. Absolutely nothing has changed, and I know it’s not going to. And that feels like an answer, in and of itself.

No one is going to help. No reinforcements are coming. But God left us a weapon, one it’s high time I used.

Me.

41

SARAH

I get off the floor.

My tears have dried and I feel empty now, and calm. My blood slows and my sight sharpens. Fear is replaced by cool certainty, and I welcome it.

Nadeau will cure Cecelia. Roche will tell me how to find Henri and provide me the documents he owes us.

I just went about it all wrong. And time travel will allow me to do it again, the right way.

Normally, when I time travel, I do so from the barn. Tonight, though, I just go into the kitchen. I close my eyes and go back to the evening before. Some previous version of me sleeps nearby and I freeze for a moment, worried I’ll wake her. But there isn’t a sound. She continues to dream, blissfully unaware of how terribly her day is about to go.

I dress in trousers and a sweater that hang by the fire and I sneak out of the house, sliding through the shadows in town to Roche’s home. When I reach his locked door, I know I should be terrified, and perhaps some distant part of my brain still is, but anger is like an ice-cold drink on the hottest day. It makes me feel new again, and capable of anything.

I consider my options—knocking on his door or time traveling inside on my own. I go for the latter. He’s stronger than I am and may be armed, so I want the element of surprise on my side. I focus on the interior of his house, and fade, landing inside perhaps a second earlier. He’s a sound sleeper, which is unwise given his profession, and unwise given the enemy he’s made in me, though he’s not aware of it yet. His snores continue unabated while I open his door to get my clothes from his front stoop, and don’t stop until I’m standing beside him, pressing my blade to his neck. He gasps as it punctures the skin. “I’d be very careful, were I you,” I tell him. “I’m barely a millimeter from a very important artery. And before you do something stupid, know this: you won’t be the first person I’ve killed, and I sort of enjoy the experience when warranted. Now tell me where Henri Durand is.”

It sounds believable. Perhaps because every word of it is true. His nostrils flare but, to his credit, he doesn’t try to attack me. “He met the people in Paris. That’s all I know.”

“So how do I reach the people in Paris?”

“I don’t know,” he says. “They contact me, not the reverse.”

I press the blade against his neck more firmly and allow it to nick his skin. “How sad for you, then.”

His teeth grind together before he concedes. “Go to the Café de la Mairie. Tell them you’re tired of chicory and long for a single sip of real coffee, then ask for Robert. Now get that blade off my neck.”

“Not so fast,” I say, leaning closer. “There is still the matter of the papers you owe Henri.”

“I don’t have your papers!” he shouts. “And Durand didn’t get the job done, so you won’t be getting them.”

“Sit up,” I hiss. “I’d like you to watch something.”

Still holding the blade to his neck, I pull another knife from my jacket with my left hand and throw it at the rosary hanging from his bookcase. My gaze remains on him as the chain breaks and the beads spill to the floor, and then I lean in close. “I am capable of doing things you can’t even dream of, and I want my fucking papers.”

I’ve spent years asking nicely and pleading for what I need.

As he unwillingly moves to his desk to get what I’ve demanded, I realize I should have done it this way all along.

* * *

Just after sunrise, a few hours after I’ve left Roche’s house with our papers, I go to the site of the attack. Whoever threw that brick at my head is about to pay dearly for what he did. I hide in the bushes, longing to warn myself as Cecelia’s pram comes into view. That brick comes sailing through the air, striking with a force that makes me wince as I watch it happen.

Someone rushes up to grab my basket. It’s only when she turns to flee that I see her face.

Claudette Loison.