Page 55 of The Moonlight Healers

Agnes placed her canvas bag on the ground with a small thud. “I’ve been on my feet since before dawn. A birth on the outskirts of town. Can we go downstairs where it’s cooler, please? You look thin. Let me fix us something to eat.”

Helene clutched the envelope tightly as she followed her mother out of the bedroom and down the stairs. In the kitchen, Agnes peered inside a cupboard for a long time, as though hoping something better might appear. She sighed and took out a small tin of canned sardines. “I wasn’t able to do the shopping today.” She reached for the end of a bread loaf from a bowl on the counter. “There’s not much, I’m afraid.”

With her grandfather gone, and with the constant demands of her mother’s work, Helene wondered how her mother could possibly get on. She felt a stab of guilt, for not coming home as soon as she learned about her grandfather, for not insisting.

“It’s fine. You don’t have to…”

Agnes set down two plates and motioned for Helene to sit. “I don’t have to feed my daughter?”

Helene shook her head as she sat at the table. “You weren’t expecting me.”

“No, no, I wasn’t.” Agnes tore the little bit of stale bread into two chunks, placing one on each of their plates. “You weren’t supposed to see any of that. If I had known you’d be here—” she used the bread to scoop up some of the sardines “—I would have found somewhere else for it. Although I suppose it’s too late now to worry about such things.”

Helene put the identity cards on the table in front of her. “So, you help forge papers for people?”

“No, I only help move them. It’s easy for me, to move more freely, because of my work. It doesn’t arouse much suspicion, or at least it didn’t used to.”

Helene’s heart rate quickened as the silence of the house grewmore ominous. She had heard stories of people who had been shot for less than the presence of those papers in their home.

She understood, then, why her grandfather was gone, the truth her mother’s letter had been so carefully concealing. “Was Grandpapa a part of this? Was he caught?”

“Not this.” Agnes stared down at the blue veins that ran along the backs of her hands. “He was helping move things too, but in a different way, and someone he worked with was careless. That’s all it takes, Helene.”

Helene knew how hard it was for her grandfather to bite back his resentment, to act with any kind of deference for the Germans. She should have known his complacency was concealing something more. In retrospect, it was surprising for himnotto try to fight back, to resist in whatever way he could. But it was harder for Helene to believe that her mother, who had spent a lifetime hiding her gift, who never took a chance that might expose their abilities, could be involved in something so risky. She realized, with an ache in her chest, that perhaps she didn’t know her mother at all.

“Do you know where Grandpapa is? Is he going to be okay?”

Agnes shook her head. “I don’t know. It’s impossible to get any real information right now. They searched the house, after they arrested him. But they didn’t find anything. We’ve been careful.”

“I found these,” Helene said as she raised the papers.

Agnes nodded. “I know. They shouldn’t be here. But I can’t risk taking them outside. Not now. Not when there’s a chance they may be watching me more closely.”

“How long have you been doing this?” Helene recalled the weeks before she left for Rouen, whispered conversations between Agnes and her grandfather, furtive looks, nights her mother was gone far longer than would seem necessary. She had been so caught up in her own worries, which now seemed so insignificant, that she had missed all of it.

Agnes seemed to weigh how honest to be. “About a year. Small things, at first. And then more as time went on. Until I knew it was far too dangerous to continue with you here.”

Helene had been so angry at her mother for sending her away, when all that time her mother and grandfather had been risking their lives.

“Cecelia sent me home.” Helene knew she needed to say it quickly, before she lost her nerve. “She never wanted me there, Maman. I wanted to write to you, but…she told me, right after I got there, that what I can do, what you can do…” Agnes sat up straighter in her chair. “She called it blasphemy, a sin.”

“So, you did it anyway then?” Helene nodded. “I’ll write to her,” Agnes said. “She’ll let you return. She has to.”

“She won’t let me back, Maman,” Helene said quietly. “Not after what I did. Not after I brought him back.”

Muffled voices drifted up from the alley beneath the kitchen window. Agnes was very still. There was no anger in her eyes, only dismay. “Who?” she asked.

The words lodged in Helene’s throat.

“We promised to be honest with each other, didn’t we?” Agnes asked.

The events of the last few days clawed at her insides: Thomas—she had no idea where he was—the men who died beneath her hands, Vogel’s pistol. Her mother was the only person who would truly understand.

“There was a Canadian,” Helene said finally. “In Dieppe. He was a soldier who was injured in the raid. His name was Thomas.

“I helped him. I saved his life. He was going to be okay. Everything was fine.” Helene’s chest tightened at the memory. “But then it wasn’t. For no reason at all. His heart stopped in the operating theater. And he was my age, Maman. He was just a boy. And he had parents and sisters, and a home.”

“Helene…”

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