Page 28 of The Moonlight Healers

The truck was flooded with light as the driver lifted the flaps to the side. The street was full of men, an endless sea of soldiers walking to and from the beach, some Germans, others in Canadian fatigues, their arms behind their backs, their postures collapsed.

“Go on now, girls, report to the medical tents. They’re bringing the men there from triage. Make yourselves useful in whatever way you can,” Cecelia said. The women began to climb out of the truck, but Cecelia put a hand on Helene’s arm to stop her before she could follow.

“You’ll come with me, Helene. Down to the beach.”

Helene couldn’t move or speak or even form a coherent thought. There was no anger in Cecelia’s expression, or disappointment. Her normally composed features were clouded with apprehension.

Cecelia flinched as a gunshot rang out in the distance. Then she leaned forward and gripped Helene’s wrist. “Help them,” she said. “I brought you here so that you could help them.”

“I’m not a nurse.”

“I know that.”

Helene looked up at her, comprehension dawning. “You said…”

“I know what I said.” Cecelia held Helene’s wrist so tightly now it was painful. “And we will both reckon with the consequences of our actions.” She turned her head toward the beach. “But for that, there is time. Now, we must help them. True mercy. Not at the end of a rifle. Not cold and wet and alone. Find the ones at the end. And take away their pain. You can’t save them, Helene. But you can give them grace in their last moments.”

She lifted Helene’s wrist up until it was at her chest. “Can you do what your mother taught you, Helene?”

Helene trembled. She thought of the last time she was able to use her gift, the last few weeks of her father’s life, when her mother needed to sleep or see a patient. She was thirteen years old, watching her father die, unrecognizable, his mind delirious. She had tried to save him. She didn’t care what her mother told her. She pressed her hands onto his chest, begging him to live, but she couldn’t bring him back. She wasn’t strong enough.

“I… I don’t know that I can,” she said.

Cecelia’s gaze was so penetrating Helene felt every failing of her past exposed, cast into the glaring light of day. There was no compassion in her eyes, none of the gentle understanding of her mother. She didn’t look at Helene like a helpless child. She looked at her like an equal.

“You can, Helene. And you will.”

Something deep in Helene’s body seemed to come alive atCecelia’s words. A current of energy ran down her arms, a sensation she had once known innately, one she had believed she might never feel again.

Without another word, she stepped down from the truck and followed Cecelia toward the beach.

CROZET, VIRGINIA

2019

9

LOUISE

Louise didn’t speak on the short drive back from Sarah’s house. She didn’t know what to say to her grandmother, how to express how wonderful it was to have helped Sarah, but also how confused she felt. She watched the mountains on the horizon, laced with veils of mist despite the blue skies overhead.

She didn’t know how to simply go on with her life, tuck away the knowledge that she could help people who were suffering, focus on college math courses and a career in finance when this vast, undiscovered world now existed. It had always made sense to her, to choose a career where she could support herself. It was a lesson drilled into her by her mother for as long as she could remember.

“Don’t make my mistake,” she told Louise. “Make enough money where you never have to ask for help, rely on your father to pay your rent. It took me years to build my career into a place where I could support us alone. And look at your grandmother. If it wasn’t for my uncle Dan she couldn’t keep the orchard going. It’s massively expensive to run that place, and the profit doesn’t cover it.”

And Louise had agreed with her mother. She would follow the path laid out, make enough to support herself and her mother, pay her back for all she had sacrificed, the late nights and constant weekends spent working, the struggle to balance a career and being the only available parent.

But now, she felt that path shift beneath her feet.

“Penny for your thoughts,” Camille said from the driver’s seat.

Louise squinted into the bright sunlight as she looked out the windshield. She didn’t want to tell her grandmother what she was thinking, as though saying the words out loud would give them a power she wasn’t ready to face.

“Can I tell people?” she asked finally, settling on the question that had pressed on her the most, every time she struggled to explain to Peter what had happened after the accident or contemplated a future in which she would always have to lie to him. “People outside the family?”

Camille didn’t respond at first, her eyes on the road as they passed a pasture filled with grazing cows. Finally, she shrugged. “There aren’t any rules to this, Louise. It’s not like we have a handbook. I took my lead from my mother. She never told my father or brother. I think it was always easier for her, to keep the two things separate, her role at home and her role as a healer.”

She checked the side mirror. “She didn’t trust the world. She had seen too much evil, and suffering.”

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