Page 54 of The Moonlight Healers

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 ofher 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 therehadbeen 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 wasstamped in several places, with phrases like “Republique Française” 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. Shehad as many questions for her mother as she knew she did for her. “What are you doing with these?” She held up the cards.

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