Page 35 of The Moonlight Healers

“Please don’t leave,” he said. “Please just stay. For a little while?” She couldn’t help him further, but when she looked athis face again, beneath the charm, she saw real vulnerability. “What’s your name?” he asked.

Her hand was still on her medical kit. If she stopped working, stopped moving, allowed herself to exist as herself again and not simply a nurse, she didn’t know if she would be able to get up. But his expression was so kind, and trusting, and Helene couldn’t unsee it. “Helene,” she told him.

“Helene,” he repeated. “It’s probably stupid, but I thought it might be nice to have a few more minutes. Before all that. Just to sit here in the sun and talk to a pretty girl.”

Helene felt her cheeks flush. She had never been called pretty by a boy. She had hardly even talked to a boy. Even before the war, she’d never lived the kind of life that some of her neighbors or classmates did, where she could put on a nice dress and go to a dance and talk to a handsome boy. By the time she was old enough to go to dances, her father was already sick, and after his death, she never had much interest. Music reminded her too much of him, of the way he sang to her, the old fisherman’s ballads he knew by heart.

“There’s no reason for you to leave, Helene. There’s no one left to help,” he said quietly as his eyes scanned the beach. “The Germans are taking care of anyone too injured to be brought to the tents.”

Gunshots echoed in her mind. She had been ignoring the sound all afternoon, but she knew he was right.

At this reminder, some last, remaining prop inside of her collapsed. It was all over, and for what? All those men, all those bodies, and nothing had been gained or changed.

“I’m Thomas.” He offered his hand and she accepted it. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Helene.”

“You as well.”

He peered straight at her, his gray eyes curious. “How did you end up here exactly?”

Helene set her arms back at her sides and crossed her legs.Her arms were covered in sand and dried blood. Her hair was loose from where it had been tied back that morning, sweaty and sticking to her forehead. She smoothed the wrinkles in her lap, automatically, but stopped when she saw the dark red stains on her apron.

“Why did you decide to be a nurse?” His voice was softer now.

“I…” She thought of giving him a vague, polite answer, the kind of agreeable pleasantry told to strangers. But for some reason she couldn’t bring herself to lie to him, not after what’d she witnessed today. “I didn’t. My mother. My mother wanted this for me.”

Thomas nodded. “Why is that?”

“She was one. In the last war. She sees people in our town now. Helps with the pain of childbirth. Takes care of people who are sick. Anything people need. I assist her. Or try to at least.”

“What is the name of your town?”

“Honfleur.” Something inside of her loosened as the word left her lips. It was almost like saying the name could bring it closer, her grandfather’s rough wool coat, her mother’s dried flowers hanging in the closet, the creak of the loose floorboard on the stairs, the light through the windows in the afternoon.

Thomas cocked his head. “Is that near here?”

Helene gazed out toward the channel. “Not too far. It feels far, though, sometimes.” She knew she was only a short train ride from Honfleur, and yet Rouen felt like its own continent, separated from her old life.

“I know what you mean.”

Helene looked back at Thomas. She couldn’t help but note how handsome he was as the sun kissed his skin. She felt awkward, unsure of how to talk to him. She settled on the simplest question she could think of, an easy one. “How old are you?”

He squinted at her. “Why do you ask?”

Had she embarrassed him? “I’m sorry, I didn’t—”

“I’m eighteen, nineteen in October,” he said before she could finish. “Why? Do I seem young to you?”

“No,” she said. “Or, I mean, yes. Not too young.” She felt herself blush.

Thomas studied her in a way that made Helene’s stomach somersault. “How old are you then?”

“Seventeen.”

“Ha!” Thomas exclaimed. He tried to shift his weight but grimaced at the movement. “Knew it.”

“Knew what?”

“That I was older than you.”

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