The Moonlight Healers

14. Helene

14

HELENE

Helene’s mind drifted as she sat through five-o’clock mass in the soaring église Sainte-Madeleine on the western side of the H?tel-Dieu. It was obligatory for the nursing students to attend at least one mass a week, and even though Helene would much rather be sleeping, or on the ward with Thomas, she knew she would get reprimanded if she didn’t attend.

She let her hand trail over the wooden pew, barely hearing as the priest gave the blessing. All she could think of was Thomas, of the gentleness of his eyes, the firm, certain way he held her hand. It wasn’t until the other congregants rose to their feet with a flurry of movement that Helene even realized the mass was over.

She genuflected next to the pew, because she knew the sisters would be watching, and then hurried down the center aisle. The space above her was so cavernous it almost felt like being outside, with wide stone arches and massive columns that stretched seemingly infinitely toward the sky. She passed the wall of flick ering candles and exited through the gargantuan wooden door that led out onto the courtyard.

Before her eyes could adjust to the sharp afternoon sun, Elisabeth appeared on the steps in front of her, her face anxious.

Helene stopped abruptly. Elisabeth had no reason to be there. She had attended mass the previous day and was not one to ever voluntarily step foot in the church on her own. “What’s wrong?”

Elisabeth climbed the rest of the steps to Helene. “I was trying to sleep, but some of the girls who worked this morning came into the dormitory.” She went silent as several civilians filed past them out of the church. She waited until they were gone before she continued. “It’s Thomas, Helene.”

Helene’s stomach jolted. She had seen Thomas just that morning, and he had been in good spirits.

“He came down with a fever,” Elisabeth said, her voice low as more people exited. “Right after shift change. The wound was infected. Dr. Weber took him to the operating theater, to clean it out.” Elisabeth hesitated. “I thought you should know. I know you’ve been spending some time with him. I saw you talking the last two nights.”

Helene gripped Elisabeth’s wrist. “Elisabeth, tell me what happened.”

“They were saying he must have already been septic. And…and he started clotting. He threw a clot in his lungs. There was nothing anyone could do.”

Helene’s body went cold, despite the hot sun.

“His heart stopped, Helene. He didn’t make it.”

The green grass of the courtyard and blue sky suddenly felt all wrong, nightmarish. The light around her seemed to change, draining all of the color from the day. “Where is he?” she asked calmly.

“Where—”

“Where is he?” Helene repeated, her voice so loud Elisabeth flinched. “Is he still warm?”

“I think you’re in shock.”

Helene stumbled down one step. “Is he still in the operating theater?”

“I’m not sure. I don’t… I don’t know.”

Helene’s legs were leaden, but she pushed herself forward.

“Where are you going?” Elisabeth asked carefully.

Helene ignored her and shuffled down the stairs to the courtyard. She heard Elisabeth’s footsteps hurrying to keep up with her on the gravel pathway.

“I’m so sorry, Helene. Please, why don’t we go somewhere quiet, somewhere we can talk.”

“Don’t follow me,” Helene snapped. She knew she was being unkind, but she also couldn’t have Elisabeth interfere. She ignored everyone and everything in her path as she walked quickly across the courtyard, back past the guard she had seen on her way to church, and into the hospital wing. She concentrated only on the sound of her breathing, on the thud of her heartbeat in her ears as she strode down the first-floor hallway to the operating wing.

The hallway outside the operating theater was empty. It was past the scheduled cases of the day, and no one was inside except for a lone French custodian mopping at the other end. He looked up as Helene entered. He had white hair and a stooped back, likely drawn out of retirement when all the younger men went off to war. He nodded at Helene, then went back to his work.

She opened each door along the hallway, but one after another was vacant. Finally, she reached the last operating theater. Thomas had to be in here.

The walls were covered in square tiles, and there were no windows, only massive circular lights that hung from the ceiling. There was a large sink near the door, and a huge glass-front supply cabinet on the opposite wall.

And in the center of it all, a long table, the form of a body draped beneath a thin white sheet.

Helene felt panic rip through her body. Heat shot down her arms as she pulled the sheet back.

He appeared almost the same as he had earlier that morning in the ward, as though he were only sleeping. His eyes were closed, his lips slightly parted. His skin was pale, but not yet bloodless.

As she reached toward his chest, she could almost sense the last, lingering reverberations of life in his heart.

“You’re still there,” Helene whispered.

The memory flashed again in her mind, from when she was nine years old. The feral alley cat, its blank, vacant stare, how she had pressed into it until crackles of energy exploded in her hands like fireworks, the way it sprang up from the ground at her touch, nuzzling itself into her palms. And her mother’s voice in her ears.

“That’s not what we do,” Agnes had told Helene as she gripped her so tightly it hurt. “That’s not the game we played with roses. That poor creature had died. It was at peace. But you brought it back like it was just a toy. You have to promise me. Never do that again.”

But as Helene looked at Thomas’s face, at one more thing that had been taken from her, the only beautiful thing left in her life, his vision of the future, her mother’s warnings faded away. Maybe just this once. Just this boy.

Helene placed her hands on Thomas’s chest. She closed her eyes and waited, but she felt only a few faint traces of electricity, like the last rumbles of a storm.

“Please,” Helene heard herself say. “Please.”

Then she felt it rush into her, an anger so consuming that it devoured everything, the war that had stolen everything from them, the German soldiers like Vogel who regarded them as kindling, the leaders in her country who let it happen. Herself. For not being able to save her father. For all those years when her gift was dormant, trapped inside of her.

Every second of shame and guilt swirled into her body like a storm.

As Helene exhaled, she felt she would break from the weight of her emotions, and a surge of energy ripped through her body. Her arms shook but she steadied them on Thomas’s chest, heat rushing outward down the nerve endings in her arms.

Thomas was there. He was so close she could hear his voice, see his gray eyes on her, as though she mattered to him, more than anyone.

“Please.”

Helene’s fingers jumped as she sensed a movement so faint she was sure she’d imagined it. She held her breath, and the heat of her palms suddenly receded. A faint but incontrovertible heartbeat pulsed.

The door behind her swung open just as Thomas’s chest heaved with a first, perfect breath. Helene didn’t turn to see who was there. She didn’t care. The only thing that existed in the world was the breath in Thomas’s lungs, the contractions of his heart, the proof that he was whole again.

“No, Helene.”

Cecelia’s voice was sharp as it carried across the operating theater. Helene remained where she was, her hands still on Thomas’s chest, as though her touch were the only thing keeping him there.

Footsteps came to a stop directly behind her.

“I found him like this,” she said quickly, groping for an explanation. “I only wanted to say goodbye, but when I pulled back the sheet his skin was still warm. I felt a pulse, a weak one, but it’s there.”

“I’ll be taking him now, to the morgue,” Cecelia said loudly.

Helene turned to her in shock. Thomas was alive; she had brought him back. There was no need for the morgue.

Cecelia bent her head down until her face was only inches from Helene’s, and squeezed her arm. “There is a guard out side,” she whispered. “Do not say another word—do you understand me?”

Helene nodded and Cecelia released her.

Cecelia positioned the sheet back over Thomas, whose breathing was shallow but persistent, his eyes still shut.

“I’ll be taking him now,” she repeated. “Down to the morgue.”

“I’ll go with you,” Helene said. She needed to be there when he woke up, to explain, to reassure him it was going to be okay. “I can help.”

Cecelia calmly circled the stretcher to unlock each of the four brakes on the wheels. When she finished, she leaned in toward Helene again. “No, no, you won’t,” she said. “You’ll go back to your dormitory, say nothing to anyone. Pack your belongings. I’ll arrange for someone to take you to the train station this evening.”

Down the hallway they heard the distant sound of the guard’s boots. Helene couldn’t believe Cecelia would send her away for saving a man’s life. She didn’t want to leave, not yet, not before she had a chance to talk to Thomas one more time, to tell him he was going to be okay, that the future would be beautiful. She lifted her chin. “You can’t just dismiss me. I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“There are consequences to your actions,” Cecelia hissed. “And you would know that if you had listened to me, if you weren’t such a selfish child.”

“I was trying to help him.”

“No, Helene, you did this for yourself.”

Thomas stirred slightly under the sheet. Helene took a step forward involuntarily.

“Goodbye, Helene,” Cecelia said, her voice returned to a normal volume.

Just then, the guard peered inside. “Why are you lingering in here?” he asked, surveying them.

“The doctor has requested his body,” Cecelia said. “Is there some reason I need to delay the doctor’s request?”

“No, Sister,” the soldier said after a brief hesitation. “Go on.” And with that he turned on his heel and left.

Cecelia followed, wheeling Thomas out of the room, leaving Helene alone in the empty operating theater.

* * *

Helene hurried home from the Honfleur train station at nightfall. As she glanced around the once-familiar surroundings, she couldn’t shake the feeling that her hometown was a shell of its former self, languishing in the heat.

At her house, Helene slipped through the back door. The cool darkness felt like a relief as she headed up the stairs from the boarded-up shop. Her home was much as she’d left it. The long tables were bare, the register dust covered.

Elisabeth had been in the dormitory when Helene went to pack her things, her eyes wide with shock as Helene told her Cecelia was sending her home.

“Why?” she had asked repeatedly. “You can’t just leave. We need you. I need you.”

“I’m sorry,” Helene told her. And she meant it. As happy as she was to have brought Thomas back, she regretted that it meant leaving Elisabeth there alone. But she couldn’t explain why she was leaving. It wasn’t safe. If anything, her time in Rouen had reinforced every warning her mother gave her, that at their core, humans could be barbaric. Elisabeth would never betray her, but if she knew about healing, about Helene’s abilities, it might put her in danger by association.

And so Helene left Rouen in an anxious haze. Thomas was alive, but she might not ever see him again. Even if she wrote and begged for answers, she knew Cecelia would likely never tell her where he was taken, if she even knew herself.

Despite her mother’s letter from earlier that week, a part of her was convinced her grandfather would be at the house. She could almost hear him in the dining room above her, the scratch of his chair against the wood floors, the clink of silverware as he tucked into whatever meager ration he had procured for the day, yet smiling widely as he lied through his teeth and complimented her mother on the meal. Helene had never known the house without him in it, had never spent a day at home without breathing in the smell of his cologne or feeling the bristle of his white beard as he kissed her hello.

But when she opened the door that led to the kitchen, the silence that greeted her was total. He was gone; he had been gone long enough for the house to settle into his absence.

In the kitchen, the stove was dark, the table and counters empty. “Maman,” Helene called as she set her suitcase on the floor. “Maman, are you here?”

She walked into the dining room. There was no sign of her mother through the sliding door to the parlor. Helene tried to ignore the fear rising in her throat. For a horrible moment, she imagined black leather boots marching up the stairs, her mother pulled from her bed in the middle of night, pushed along, a pistol at her back.

“Maman,” she called again, her voice louder as she trailed her hands along the smooth surface of the mahogany dining table.

It felt impossible that there had ever existed brightness there, but there had been good times, the vibration of a dozen voices and the clatter of silverware, the heavy pours of wine, Helene’s uncles and father by the piano with glasses of Calvados, her father still tall and broad shouldered. Her grandmother, before her heart failed, serving fish and heaping plates of buttered potatoes, soft golden loaves of bread warm from the oven. Her grandfather in his chair by the radio, a book open on his lap. And Agnes, quiet but reluctantly at home in the loud, affectionate family she had been informally adopted into, far from the solitude and harsh beauty of the mountains where she was raised.

At the window, the last rays of sun were softening into shadows. Helene often wondered why Agnes didn’t leave, once her father’s drinking took over his life, when he spent his days at the local brasserie instead of at work, or even after his death. She could have taken Helene back to the mountains, to her home and family, to the sisters she so deeply loved and missed. Agnes had insisted that her responsibilities as a healer outweighed her personal desires, that her life was defined by her calling, and she was needed in Honfleur, and now, as she pulled the blackout curtains closed, fastening the stiff fabric tightly, Helene felt a wave of sadness for her mother.

She looked around the unchanged parlor, the tattered fabric of the couches, the worn leather of her grandfather’s armchair by the fireplace, and thought of Thomas’s promises of the future. Maybe Helene’s life could be different. She could walk away from all of it. She had done her part, helped all those men in Dieppe, saved Thomas. Maybe that was enough. Maybe her life didn’t need to be defined by sickness and death. She could find Thomas, somehow, beg Cecelia to tell her where he was, create a life with him away from the war.

Upstairs in her room, the floor creaked as Helene made her way to the bed. She lay back, the springs groaning, and fingered the soft patchwork quilt, the loose threads and patches of fabric she knew by heart. She closed her eyes and tried to ignore the hot, sluggish silence around her. Her mother must be with a patient. She would be home soon.

As Helene reached up to adjust the pillow, her palm brushed against a small package tucked underneath. She twisted her body and sat up, pulling out a rectangular envelope. Had her mother or grandfather left her something? She lifted the flap and withdrew a stack of papers. The cream-colored paper was thick, much more formal than any stationary her mother might have kept for personal correspondence.

Helene’s hands shook as she unfolded one of the papers. It was stamped in several places, with phrases like “Republique Francaise” and “Prefecture de Police” emblazoned in red and blue ink. There was a photo of a pretty young woman with wavy brown hair in the top lefthand corner, and a blue thumbprint in the bottom left. It was an identity card issued by the Vichy government after the occupation. Helene knew it well, because she never went anywhere without hers.

The second identity card contained a photo of a middle-aged man with receding hair and thoughtful eyes.

A door opened and closed downstairs, followed by footsteps. Helene vaguely knew her mother would notice her suitcase at the door, heard her name called, but she couldn’t look away from the man on the third card. His name was listed as Henri Dubois. He was six feet tall with brown hair and brown eyes. He worked as a pharmacist. Something in his soft eyes and dimpled chin reminded her of her father.

“Helene.”

Agnes’s voice held a mix of alarm and confusion as she entered the room, the scent of lavender and hand soap and rubbing alcohol carrying through the air. “Helene.”

Even in the dark, she could see how much thinner her mother had grown in the last few months. Her hard features were even more pronounced, the bones of her cheeks and jaw rigid little crests. There were new strands of gray in her hair, and her posture was stooped, her shoulders slumped.

She moved quickly across the room, and before Helene could explain herself, her mother wrapped her arms around her, fiercely, squeezing her tight. For a moment, Helene simply let herself be held.

“Why are you here?” Agnes asked when she finally released her. Her eyes were wide and full of worry. “Why aren’t you in Rouen?”

Helene was torn between desperate, childish relief at seeing her mother again and shock over the stack of identity cards. She had as many questions for her mother as she knew she did for her. “What are you doing with these?” She held up the cards.

Agnes placed her canvas bag on the ground with a small thud. “I’ve been on my feet since before dawn. A birth on the outskirts of town. Can we go downstairs where it’s cooler, please? You look thin. Let me fix us something to eat.”

Helene clutched the envelope tightly as she followed her mother out of the bedroom and down the stairs. In the kitchen, Agnes peered inside a cupboard for a long time, as though hoping something better might appear. She sighed and took out a small tin of canned sardines. “I wasn’t able to do the shopping today.” She reached for the end of a bread loaf from a bowl on the counter. “There’s not much, I’m afraid.”

With her grandfather gone, and with the constant demands of her mother’s work, Helene wondered how her mother could possibly get on. She felt a stab of guilt, for not coming home as soon as she learned about her grandfather, for not insisting.

“It’s fine. You don’t have to…”

Agnes set down two plates and motioned for Helene to sit. “I don’t have to feed my daughter?”

Helene shook her head as she sat at the table. “You weren’t expecting me.”

“No, no, I wasn’t.” Agnes tore the little bit of stale bread into two chunks, placing one on each of their plates. “You weren’t supposed to see any of that. If I had known you’d be here—” she used the bread to scoop up some of the sardines “—I would have found somewhere else for it. Although I suppose it’s too late now to worry about such things.”

Helene put the identity cards on the table in front of her. “So, you help forge papers for people?”

“No, I only help move them. It’s easy for me, to move more freely, because of my work. It doesn’t arouse much suspicion, or at least it didn’t used to.”

Helene’s heart rate quickened as the silence of the house grew more ominous. She had heard stories of people who had been shot for less than the presence of those papers in their home.

She understood, then, why her grandfather was gone, the truth her mother’s letter had been so carefully concealing. “Was Grandpapa a part of this? Was he caught?”

“Not this.” Agnes stared down at the blue veins that ran along the backs of her hands. “He was helping move things too, but in a different way, and someone he worked with was careless. That’s all it takes, Helene.”

Helene knew how hard it was for her grandfather to bite back his resentment, to act with any kind of deference for the Germans. She should have known his complacency was concealing something more. In retrospect, it was surprising for him not to try to fight back, to resist in whatever way he could. But it was harder for Helene to believe that her mother, who had spent a lifetime hiding her gift, who never took a chance that might expose their abilities, could be involved in something so risky. She realized, with an ache in her chest, that perhaps she didn’t know her mother at all.

“Do you know where Grandpapa is? Is he going to be okay?”

Agnes shook her head. “I don’t know. It’s impossible to get any real information right now. They searched the house, after they arrested him. But they didn’t find anything. We’ve been careful.”

“I found these,” Helene said as she raised the papers.

Agnes nodded. “I know. They shouldn’t be here. But I can’t risk taking them outside. Not now. Not when there’s a chance they may be watching me more closely.”

“How long have you been doing this?” Helene recalled the weeks before she left for Rouen, whispered conversations between Agnes and her grandfather, furtive looks, nights her mother was gone far longer than would seem necessary. She had been so caught up in her own worries, which now seemed so insignificant, that she had missed all of it.

Agnes seemed to weigh how honest to be. “About a year. Small things, at first. And then more as time went on. Until I knew it was far too dangerous to continue with you here.”

Helene had been so angry at her mother for sending her away, when all that time her mother and grandfather had been risking their lives.

“Cecelia sent me home.” Helene knew she needed to say it quickly, before she lost her nerve. “She never wanted me there, Maman. I wanted to write to you, but…she told me, right after I got there, that what I can do, what you can do…” Agnes sat up straighter in her chair. “She called it blasphemy, a sin.”

“So, you did it anyway then?” Helene nodded. “I’ll write to her,” Agnes said. “She’ll let you return. She has to.”

“She won’t let me back, Maman,” Helene said quietly. “Not after what I did. Not after I brought him back.”

Muffled voices drifted up from the alley beneath the kitchen window. Agnes was very still. There was no anger in her eyes, only dismay. “Who?” she asked.

The words lodged in Helene’s throat.

“We promised to be honest with each other, didn’t we?” Agnes asked.

The events of the last few days clawed at her insides: Thomas—she had no idea where he was—the men who died beneath her hands, Vogel’s pistol. Her mother was the only person who would truly understand.

“There was a Canadian,” Helene said finally. “In Dieppe. He was a soldier who was injured in the raid. His name was Thomas.

“I helped him. I saved his life. He was going to be okay. Everything was fine.” Helene’s chest tightened at the memory. “But then it wasn’t. For no reason at all. His heart stopped in the operating theater. And he was my age, Maman. He was just a boy. And he had parents and sisters, and a home.”

“Helene…”

Helene knew if she didn’t finish, if she didn’t tell her mother everything now, she never would. She would lose the courage. “He died. For no reason at all. And I couldn’t… I couldn’t do nothing. I couldn’t survive doing nothing.”

Agnes closed her eyes.

“I saved his life. I brought him back. I know you always said I shouldn’t, that it was wrong. And I couldn’t with Papa. But I had to try. And it was different this time. I healed him.”

“You didn’t heal him, Helene.” Agnes sighed.

“I did. You weren’t there. You didn’t see it. But I did.” Helene heard the note of impatience in her tone, but she couldn’t help it. She couldn’t stand the way her mother was looking at her. It was the same way Cecelia had looked at her, as if she had made some awful mistake when all she had done was save a life.

“No,” Agnes said. “You kept him here. For a little while. But, Helene.” She seemed to steel herself. “It won’t endure. He won’t live, not for more than a few days, maybe weeks.”

Helene was stunned into silence. It couldn’t be true.

“I told you. Time and again. We can’t stop death,” she said softly. “And we shouldn’t. The greatest healing we are capable of is in death, to let a person die with peace, with dignity.”

Helene blinked back tears and tried to compose herself. “So, Thomas will…”

Agnes’s eyes were full of compassion. “You gave him a little time. A few days, or maybe even weeks. It varies, but my mother always told me that it would endure for at least the length of a single moon phase, but never longer than a full lunar cycle. Any time you gave him is borrowed.”

Helene’s shoulders shook. A distant part of her admitted she barely knew Thomas, that even if he lived, she would probably never see him again. It shouldn’t hurt so deeply. But Thomas’s life, his continued existence, felt like the one bright point in a world that had been collapsing into darkness. It felt like her own future was woven into his, that his belief was enough to expand her own life.

“Isn’t there any way?” Helene asked when she found her voice again. “For him to stay.”

Agnes looked at Helene with a mixture of grief and apprehension. She reached out and rested her hand on her cheek. “We are speaking as adults now?”

Helene nodded, her heart racing at the change in her mother’s tone.

“My mother explained it to me this way. That there has to be balance. It’s why it won’t endure, why it can’t hold.” Agnes seemed to brace herself. “Unless we restore it.”

Helene searched her mother’s face. “Restore what?”

“ L’équilibre. The only way to give your friend more time would be to take it from someone else.”

Helene searched her mother’s face. For a moment, she forgot about Thomas. All she could think of was her father, the emptiness of the house without him, the missing place in her life for all those years.

“But Papa…” she asked, terrified to even give the question a voice.

Agnes shook her head. “He was too sick, Helene. This boy you mentioned, he died suddenly. But your father.” She swallowed. “Your father’s life eroded over time. There wasn’t enough of him left. And even if I could have… I wouldn’t. Not this way.”

Helene wiped away her tears. “But there is a way then. If I can trade his life for someone else’s.” Her mind raced, a tiny spark of hope lighting its way through the darkness. She stood and started pacing. “One of your patients. Or…or at the hospital. There are wards full of people already half-dead. Sick and in pain.”

“That won’t work.” Agnes sighed. “A life in full bloom can’t be replaced by one that is already withered. That’s not balance. It would have to be someone with time, someone still whole. That’s why it can’t happen, Helene, why it doesn’t even matter. They would resist you. A life such as this cannot be so eas ily taken. It is entirely different from helping someone die who is already at the end of their life, someone who is suffering.”

But Helene’s mind was moving again, settling on the carnage in Dieppe, on Vogel’s cruel, ratlike face.

“I know where your thoughts are,” Agnes said. “The German soldiers at your hospital. The people who arrested your grandfather. Who imprisoned your uncles.”

Helene stood at the window overlooking the dark alley. She couldn’t face her mother, couldn’t bear the judgment in her eyes.

“There’s something I’ve never told you,” her mother said slowly. “Something you need to know. Your uncle Matthieu, my youngest brother, died of a fever, when he was little.”

Helene turned, confused. “Matthieu is alive, Maman. He’s in a prison in Germany.”

Agnes raised her hand. “I was ten. And he was three, with the most beautiful smile, and he loved animals, followed my father around for hours in the mud just so he could say hello to the goats and pigs.” Her eyes glistened. “He got sick and his heart stopped while he was in my mother’s arms. I was right there beside her. But she couldn’t let him go. How could she? So she brought him back. And because it was a sudden, quick death she was able to do so. There was enough of him still there.”

Helene sat back down at the table. She had never seen her mother so emotional. She was always the solid one, the rock of their family and town. Helene sometimes thought her mother didn’t experience emotions the same way as the rest of the world. Only now, she understood she had simply learned how to tuck it all away.

“There was a man, in our village, who lived alone, and was unkind to people. And he…he died, mysteriously, in his sleep, only a few days after my mother brought Matthieu back.”

“Did she…?”

“She never told me. But Matthieu lived, when he shouldn’t have. My sisters and I suspected why.”

Helene put her hand on her mother’s. She knew how hard it was for her to talk about her family, how deeply she missed them, especially her four older sisters, with whom she could share the burden and gift of healing. “So that’s a blessing then. Isn’t it? Your brother lived, as he should have. He was only a child.”

Agnes smiled sadly. “It was a blessing. For a time. My mother wouldn’t let Matthieu out of her sight. She was so grateful to have him. But over the years, she changed. Slowly at first, little ways she wasn’t herself. But it began to carve her out, after a while. She never said anything, but she lost weight, stopped sleeping, stopped working as a healer. When we were all old enough, when she knew we would be okay without her, she took her own life. I was the one to find her.”

Helene bit her lip, her eyes burning, until she knew her words would come out steady. “You never told me…”

“No, of course not. Why would I? I wanted her to have peace, at last, to be remembered for all she was and not how her life ended. But you need to know now, with the choice ahead of you.”

Helene’s vision blurred, but in her mind she focused on Thomas’s kind face, her conviction building despite her mother’s warnings. What her grandmother had done was different. She took the life of an ordinary man.

Vogel and the men like him were evil.

Helene glanced around the small kitchen, where she had sat beside her mother so many times, clung to her skirt as she made oils and tinctures at the table, squealed with delight as Agnes held shrunken flowers in her hands until they burst back to life in explosions of red and pink and blue. She could feel the room start to shift, fade at the edges as though it were already a memory instead of a real, solid place.

“I brought it back for you,” Helene said, searching for words that would anchor her in that moment. “The journal. It’s in my suitcase. It’s of no use to me there. I’ll leave it with you before I go.”

Agnes shook her head. “I gave it to you for a reason. Not to borrow, but to keep. Because it’s yours. It’s been yours since the day you were born. I was only holding it until you were ready.”

Helene couldn’t comprehend her mother’s statement, not in the context of Rouen, of an institution that would so vehemently condemn every word in that book. “But Cecelia… I told you she doesn’t approve.”

Agnes held up a finger to her lips. “You’ll find ways to help people, times that are safe, when the world isn’t looking. And you’ll learn who you really are, who I have always known you to be.”

Helene stood and walked over to her mother’s side, wrapping her arm around her shoulders. They leaned their heads together in the darkness.