Page 51 of The Moonlight Healers

“Please don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about.”

“I’m not… I didn’t…” Louise searched her mind for excuses, for explanations. She closed her eyes as drops of water ran down her face from her hair. “I can’t do this right now.”

He shifted in his seat. “Why did you really come to Crozet? Is it because of the accident…because of what you did…how you…”

“I did CPR,” Louise said.

“That’s not all you did, and we both know it.” Peter looked down at his ankle. “I felt it, earlier. Whatever that was.”

Her body trembled. “Please, Peter. I want to tell you. I want to tell you everything. But it’s complicated…and…”

“You’re lying to me,” Peter insisted, “about the trail. And about the accident.”

Louise shook her head, as though she could force him to take back his questions. She could sense it all unraveling, and she was desperate to put everything back in its place.

“I’m not,” she said feebly. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I’m not lying.”

“What really happened after the accident, Louise? Why am I alive? Why didn’t I have a scratch on me? Why did you leave immediately after, go to your grandma’s when your mom hates her? None of this makes any sense, but I was just going to let it go…but then after what just happened…” Peter rested his hands on the steering wheel. “Tell me something honest. Somethingreal.”

She felt like the air around her was constricting her lungs. “I don’t… I can’t…”

“You can’t, or you won’t?”

“Please, Peter. Let’s just go home. Do all the things we planned. I’m leaving, and…it’s… Can we just go back to normal?”

“No,” Peter said sadly. “We can’t.”

Louise reached for her seat belt. She couldn’t be in the car with him a second longer.

She took off into the orchard, weaving in and out of the rows of trees so that even if he followed he wouldn’t be able to find her. Her feet sloshed in the puddles, spraying her legs with red mud.

At some point, she started to run. She ran to the edge of the orchard and then down the hill that sloped toward the creek. It was only where the grass gave way to the rocky pebble banks, where she knew she was out of sight from the parking lot, that she allowed herself to stop moving.

She bent forward, heart pounding, and watched as the water, flush from the rain, rushed over the rocks. Beyond, the gentle, cloud-shrouded mountain rose in a sleepy incline toward a sky streaked with pink and orange.

It took Louise several moments to process the large black shape on the other side of the creek. It was a bear the size of a boulder, nearly obscured by the tall grass and wildflowers as it lay crumpled in a heap.

She waded into the creek, her mind racing. It must be a different bear, a coincidence. She gasped as the icy mountain water filled her shoes, and she stumbled across the slippery rocks, until she reached the edge of the creek a few feet across, where the grass grew up to her knees.

She sank down on the opposite bank, the bear only inches away. There was no fear this time. The bear was motionless, itseyes vacant. It was the same bear. She knew with a conviction she didn’t understand, a dread that sunk into her skin.

Peter’s face flashed into her mind. The heat in her hands, the same heat that had brought that bear back to life. Only now that heat was gone as she touched the bear’s matted fur.

Louise leaned back onto the wet grass, a phrase echoing back at her across the years. Her great-grandmother, Helene, at the orchard shortly before her death, one of the last times Louise saw her.

Normally, Helene was playful with Louise, in a way she never was with anyone else. She was always ready to offer her a treat or little trinket from a basket she kept for her visits. But that day, her eyes were full of sorrow in a way Louise had never witnessed. Camille told Louise that Helene thought she was back in Rouen, during the war. She kept repeating the same three words in French, over and over, eventually reverting to English. She said the words to Louise, as though willing her to understand them, until Camille took Louise’s hand and said it was time to go. They were words without meaning for Louise, until now.

It won’t endure.

HONFLEUR, FRANCE

1942

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 Hôtel-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.

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