Page 16 of The Moonlight Healers

“Hard, isn’t it?” Bobbie said quietly. “To not have any warning.”

Louise felt a rush of frustration at both of them, for not being able to put their issues aside, just once, for her. “Stop, please. Both of you.” She addressed her grandmother. “Mom said I’m a healer. That we are all healers. So please, explain it to me. Tell me what that means.”

Camille cupped her glass of iced tea and looked at Louise, her eyes searching. “You really brought him back?”

Memories flickered across Louise’s vision like lightning strikes, Peter on the ground, the angle of his neck, the blood at the corner of his mouth. She nodded slowly.

“I’m not…” Camille looked at Bobbie, almost pleading. “I’m sorry but I’m not feeling quite well.”

“Mom, you don’t get to do this. You don’t get to avoid it, not with her. Not this time.”

Her grandmother’s eyes grew unfocused again, and her hands trembled as she reached for her tea and then put it back down. “I think you know what you did. I think you knew from the minute you felt it.”

Slowly, Louise nodded. “I saved his life.”

“You healed him.”

Her grandmother’s words sunk into her skin, filled her lungs up like smoke, heavy and almost unbearable. “How?”

Camille raised her hands. “Touch,” she said as she turned her palms to face Louise. “You put your hands on him. That’s where it is, where it all comes from, the gift you have carried since the day you were born.”

Louise inspected her own hands. They seemed ordinary, unremarkable.

“I can’t explain it.” Camille leaned forward. “I could talk for hours but it’s not really going to mean anything. But if you’ll stay here tonight, I promise I canshowyou. I have a home visit scheduled. Tomorrow. You can come with me. Would that be okay, Barbara?”

Bobbie bit her lip. Louise knew she was struggling with the idea. In the years since she quit nursing, if the subject of her former career ever came up, Bobbie immediately shut down. Louise learned to never mention it, to pretend as if that part of her mother’s life never existed. She stopped carrying around her mother’s old stethoscope. And even though it was always her favorite make-believe game, something she used to occupy herself with for hours at the orchard, bandaging up her dolls and stuffed animals, she was careful to never play nurse or hospital unless she was at Peter’s house, away from where her mother could see.

But Bobbie had brought her to Crozet for a reason, and Louise knew that for once she couldn’t say no, even if it meant letting Louise enter the world she had long ago walked away from.

“Please, Barbara,” Camille asked at her daughter’s silence. “Stay here. One night.”

Louise could feel all the years of silence accumulating around them like snowdrifts, the holidays and birthdays spent apart, the awkward interactions at Louise’s piano recitals and school events.

“It’s why you came here,” Camille continued. “Let me help. Let me show her.”

Louise faced her mother. She refused to let their history stand in the way of her learning the truth. Her mother’s happiness, and comfort, couldn’t be the driving force behind every decision.

“Please, Mom,” she said. “Do this for me. I never ask you for anything. I’m asking for this.”

Bobbie’s features softened. “Fine. We’ll stay. One night.” She turned back to Camille. “You promise you’ll be able to show her, explain it all?”

Camille nodded. “I promise.”

ROUEN, FRANCE

July 1942

6

HELENE

The Hôtel-Dieu was quiet and mostly empty as Helene, Elisabeth, and the other first-year nursing students walked from their dormitory in the convent to their wards in the hospital. Their stiff brown shoes clicked on the stone floor of the enormous, arched hallway that connected the two wings of the building. It was Helene’s second night there, and a waning moon cast a pale blue light through the edges of the blackout shades of each window.

A young German officer with his arm in a sling was stationed halfway down, but he only nodded as they passed, his expression vacant.

“Handsome, isn’t he?” one of the second-year students in front whispered with a smirk. A nurse beside her made a hushing noise.

Helene hadn’t interacted much with the other nursing students since her arrival the previous afternoon. Mostly she kept to herself, eating in nervous silence while the girls who had been there longer chatted and gossiped in tight, impenetrable groups.

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