Page 70 of The Moonlight Healers

For a while the three of them were quiet.

“If Peter did live, it wouldn’t be much time then, would it?” she asked her grandmother when she was finally brave enough. “Because you’re…”

Camille smiled. “Because I’m old and decrepit. And he’s not.”

“I didn’t mean…”

Camille patted Louise’s knee. “Don’t worry, I’m not offended, honey. And it’s not an exact trade. You’re not giving Peter a specific, concrete number of years and days. You’re giving him the catalyst, a spark. After that, it’s his life, his time.”

“So, when then?” Bobbie asked. “When does this have to happen?”

Camille surveyed the living room, the threadbare cushions and flickering lamps. “Soon. The kind of healing you did, afterdeath, won’t last long. I already told you the old healers kept track of time through moon cycles. The shortest time between someone being brought back and dying again was a single phase of the moon.”

“How long is that?” Louise asked as panic rose in her throat. “It’s been more than three days.”

“About a week, give or take,” Camille said. “So, it should be soon, a day or two at most, to be safe. I would like…” She recovered herself. “I’d like a day, to work in my garden and walk the orchard, paint a little, finish some letters I’ve started. To my brother, Daniel. And Sam. Some of my friends and the families of patients.” She looked at Bobbie. “I need some time with Jim. I told you he already knows about the dementia. I had to tell him to put plans in place for the orchard. But he’ll take this hard. And I’d like to explain it to him. Finalize some business things. And of course, I’d like to spend time with you both. Say whatever is left for us to say.”

Bobbie’s face was ashen, but she nodded.

Camille addressed Louise. “Tell Peter he needs to stay a few more days. Tell him it’s important. He’ll need to be here. After it’s done.”

“Okay,” Louise said, as though any of this were comprehensible.

“But Louise, you can’t tell him.”

“He knows, about the healing. About the accident. It’s okay.”

“He doesn’t know he’s on borrowed time, what’s about to happen, how it will happen. Would you want to think you were alive only because someone else traded their life?”

Her grandmother was right. She couldn’t put that burden on Peter, even if she herself would carry it the rest of her life. She would find a way to live with it, because she knew it was her grandmother’s choice.

Louise opened her mouth to argue but Camille cut her off. “He trusts you, Louise. And you won’t give him a reason todoubt it. Enough talking now.” She looked at Bobbie. “Everything will seem easier in the morning.”

Neither Bobbie nor Louise moved. They only watched as Camille rose, unwilling to propel the night forward, to make time continue onward.

“It’s going to be okay, girls,” Camille said. “This is no great tragedy.”

“It doesn’t feel that way,” Bobbie said as she stood too.

Camille took Bobbie’s face in her hands. “It will all be fine. There is still some time, for all of the things we need to say. And what a gift to be able to say goodbye now, when we still can.”

Gently, she kissed Bobbie’s forehead. It was easy to forget that before their falling out, before the years of anger and resentment, they were mother and daughter; that there had been an entire lifetime that existed before her, a world in which they were each other’s centers.

“Mama?” Bobbie asked her. “I’d like to take a walk with you, if that’s okay?”

Camille smiled. “I’d like that very much.”

ROUEN, FRANCE

1942

18

HELENE

The back door of the truck slid open, filling the dark, cramped space with salt air and the glow of moonlight. Across from her, perched between apple crates, Cecelia nodded in the shadows.

“We’re here.”

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