“You aren’t from 1918.” Her eyes are wide now, astonished. “If you have my gift, you must be my descendant. A daughter or granddaughter, perhaps.”
I’m not sure how she’s leapt to what seems, in my estimation, a fantastic conclusion. “Just because we can both sort of be in two places at once doesn’t mean we’re related. It’s just an…aberration.”
“It’s the gift of all daughters of Adelaide,” she says, brow furrowed. “And our gifts aren’t meant to be special on their own…we are like puzzle pieces. We only make sense in combination. But surely you know this.”
I shake my head. Everything I’ve learned about time travel came from the blank-faced girl in the cot next to mine. “My mother didn’t time travel. I really don’t know much about it. But I’m definitely not from a first family,” I insist. “And I have no idea who Adelaide is.”
She stares at me as if I might be making a joke and seems to finally conclude that I’m not.
“Adelaide was one of the four girls who left the island,” she explains. “The start of the first families—four families, four gifts. And your gift could only come from one source. Me.”
She’s gripping my hand as if this is all very important, but everything she’s saying is impossible. Yes, if this is her time, she could conceivably be my grandmother or great-grandmother…except I know my grandmothers, and great-grandmothers, or at least know of them. “I can trace my family back on both sides to the Civil War.”
“What children know of their history is what their parents choose to tell them, and for you to exist must mean that I will have a child.”
I want her to be wrong, and yet I feel wheels in my head turning—things I’ve wondered about my entire life, like the fact that I look somewhat like my mother, but nothing like my father. And while my father was not cruel, he was also never involved, and once he left, I never heard from him again. He continued to call my brother Steven, though, and paid Steven’s tuition. I always assumed it was because he blamed me for Kit’s death, and perhaps that was true, but maybe it was more than that: maybe it was because he knew, or realized somewhere along the line, that I was not his daughter.
But if Katrin’s right, and she doesn’t escape, it means the child she’ll give birth to will be…Coron’s.
My stomach tightens. “Maybe someone else is out there with your gift and you don’t know it.”
She shakes her head. “There’s no other explanation, though we both wish it were true. I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking the child I will have is Coron’s. But you’re wrong. I’m going to escape, so it can’t be his.”
“Escape how?”
“The infirmary is our only option. Each Sunday night they leave to take the corpses out. It’s the only time the door is unlocked, aside from when the cook goes out to shop. If we convince them we’re dead, we can time travel from the outside.”
My mouth opens to voice a thousand objections: we would not be stiff and cold like corpses, first of all. And what if we get outside and we’re too drugged to jump? Or they do something to us before they leave to ensure we can’t jump?
She speaks before I can suggest a single one.
“If the plan fails in any way,” she says, “it means we’ll probably be buried alive.”
“So, it’s the nuclear option.”
“Nuclear?” she asks. “I don’t know this word.”
I wave it away. “I’m just saying…we only do it if all else fails.”
“Unless you’re able to jump back and warn yourself, all else has already failed,” she says. “Have you tried? I have, but it hasn’t worked.”
“I can’t,” I reply. “I don’t seem able to get the words out, and I doubt it would do any good if I could. I came with my friend and I know she won’t listen no matter how hard I warn her.” There is no warning that could keep Marie from making the journey she did. And the fact that she is here at all is my fault. I’m the one who told her where her mother went, when Henri begged me not to. How might their lives have gone if I hadn’t listened to my sister, if I hadn’t ever ventured back to 1938 in the first place?
“Your loyalty is admirable,” she says. “But I’m worried it might get you killed.”
We hear the echo of a guard’s boots in the hall. “You really think this infirmary plan will work?”
She squeezes my hand. “I’m not sure, but the fact that you exist, and are my descendant, makes me believe it must.”
She bolts to her bed, and I lie awake, thinking too many things to possibly hope for sleep. Is what she’s saying possible? Could I be her granddaughter, a product of a first family?
Or have I given her the kind of false hope that will get us all killed?
I wake just before the guards come in, craving Henri. I roll to my stomach, wishing I could dull the sharpness of missing him. My heart beats faster. I know I only have a moment, but I need this. I need one bright spot before another long day of pretending and worrying begins.
I squeeze my eyes shut, doing my best to ignore the shrieking of the alarm, and I go to him. It’s early in the morning, those last peaceful days of summer before the harvest began, and the night sky has begun to dull and soften. I press myself to his back, let my hand rest on his broad shoulder.
I bury my nose in the nape of his neck to smell him, a faint hint of soap from last night’s bath and summer air. I want to weep at the feel of his skin under my hand, at the smell of him. I miss him so much that the ache feels impossible to bear.
His hand comes up to close over mine. “Did you just smell me?” he asks with a sleepy laugh. I want to weep at the sound of his voice, husky with disuse. I had all of this—his sweetness, his laughter, his warm skin, his smell. I had all of it and I appreciated it, I did, but I never imagined how badly I would miss it. How desperate I’d feel, willing to give up everything just for a single piece of him. Just to carry his voice inside me, the smoothness of him beneath my hands. Just to be able to lean against his chest and tell him what is happening to us and have him direct me, or even just promise things will be okay.
I wouldn’t demand all of it. Just one of those things would suffice and I can’t have any of them.
I can’t answer. I press my lips to his neck instead, and he tenses…but it’s a good kind of tension. As if he’s allowing his brain to shut down while his body picks up the slack.
“Do that again, little thief,” he says. His voice huskier.
So I do, and then his hand drags mine down, down, to where he is hard and ready. “That’s all it took,” he says, squeezing his palm over mine, against him. And then he rolls toward me. I’ve been so good, lately, only visiting him at night. But, my God, I missed the look I see on his face right now. His eyes taking me in as if he will never want to see anything else as long as he lives.
“Will it always be like this with us?” he asks, his mouth moving over mine, pressing to my jaw.
“Like what?” I ask, arching into him.
“Like nothing but you matters,” he says. “Like I’ll die if I’m not inside you every minute we’re awake.”