Page 66 of The Moonlight Healers

“I’d like to help,” she said, careful to keep her voice steady. “I want to fight back in whatever way I can, like you.”

“What would your mother say, if she knew you were risking your life?”

Helene followed Cecelia’s gaze to the stained glass above, the beatific smile on the face of the Virgin Mary, and felt an unexpected swell of grief. The time in her life where her mother could keep her safe, act as a bulwark between Helene and the true horrors of the world, was over. She would never be that girl again.

“I think she’d say she was proud of me.”

Cecelia studied Helene’s face and nodded slightly. “Tonight,” she said. “Once a week the sisters provide alms to the sick and elderly, the homebound people in the countryside. Or at least that’s what the German guards think. You’ll come with me, to assist.” Cecelia stood. “There will be more like him, Helene, more people you will want to save. More monsters inside these walls. And far more outside. I can’t lock you away. Or be your warden. So I need to know. Is it over? Will you respect the rules as long as you are under our care? Because if you can’t, I won’t allow you to stay.”

Helene knew that to follow Cecelia’s request, she would have to live with the hatred she felt toward Vogel, and the other men like him. She knew how hard it would continue to be, for however long the war lasted, to live and work alongside them.

“I can’t respect someone like Vogel.”

“Of course not. You think I have respect for these men? When I know the evil in their souls, the destruction they have caused?”

“Then why…?”

“I respect life, Helene.Alllife. I don’t treat human souls like numbers to be added and subtracted. Violence does not solve violence. Vengeance is not justice.”

Helene thought of Irene, about all she had endured, the fact that she was only alive because she was pretending to be someone else. Cecelia made it sound so simple. But it wasn’t.

“I can’t respect all life, not theirs.”

Cecelia clasped her hands. “Because you’re human. As am I. Which is why I put my faith in God. I follow God’s will, and mercy, even if I find it near impossible at times to understand. Can you trust in God, Helene?”

Helene hadn’t believed in God since she was a little girl, when her mother used to take her to church on Sundays, before her father died, before the war and occupation, before the world revealed itself, again and again, to be a ruthless place. God felt like a fairy tale, a tattered, lost remnant of childhood. Helene shook her head.

Cecelia stepped across the aisle. “Then trust in me. The sisters who would risk their lives to keep you safe. The nurses you work beside. These are just walls. Stone and brick and mortar. None of that is God. God is these women. So if you can’t believe in God, believe in them. Stay here, for them. And for the people who need you.”

CROZET, VIRGINIA

2019

17

LOUISE

The house shone with light as Peter and Louise walked up the creaky porch steps. Louise found it difficult to even put one foot in front of the other, to keep moving toward what she knew was ahead. She had barely spoken to Peter on the short ride back from the Henleys’. She didn’t know what to say, or how to say it, how to possibly explain to him that he was living on borrowed time.

But she had to tell him; he deserved to know, to have the chance to say goodbye to his family, to use his remaining time in the way he wanted. She tried to picture how it would happen. She would find somewhere peaceful, the guest cottage, maybe, or the bench in the garden, near the magnolia tree. She would hold his hand and put aside her own grief, be there for him.

Before they could get to the door Camille came out of the house, hair askew and face full of worry. “I found your car at the market. Both of your cars. I didn’t know where you’d gone.”

“Is Mom here yet?” Louise asked. Sarah was dying, and she couldn’t save Peter. It was all over. She needed her mother there,more than ever. She had always told herself she was her mother’s tether, that she kept her anchored to the world. But now she felt as thoughshewould lose her grip if her mother wasn’t there beside her.

“She got held up with appointments. But I called her as soon as you left. She’s on her way.”

Louise stumbled past Camille into the house, Peter following close behind.

“Where were you?” Camille asked.

Louise collapsed onto the old, worn couch in the living room. “The Henleys’. Jake came to get me. He wanted me to heal her.”

Camille looked from Louise to Peter.

“He knows,” Louise said. Camille sat down heavily in the armchair across from her. “He knows I brought him back.”

Camille folded her hands on her lap. Louise could see her try to compose herself, gain some handle on what was happening.

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