Page 73 of The Moonlight Healers

Thomas shook his head. “Not goodbye. We’ve found each other too many times already. I know we’ll find one another again. Say good night instead.”

He kissed her again, once on each cheek. She closed her eyes to try to slow everything down, to keep him there a second longer.

“Good night, Thomas.”

She followed Cecelia out of the cave, the night sweeping back over them, the sky impossibly bright compared to the darkness of the cave. Helene focused on her breaths as she walked down the narrow ledge, each one bringing more salt air into her lungs. She filled herself up with it.

When they reached the path and climbed back up to the top of the cliff, the smell of the sea reminded her of a home that felt farther away than ever.

The road was empty. Helene swayed as the exhaustion of the last few days began to hit her. She felt dizzy, disoriented, the black sky, yellow moon, and gray sea blurring together into one infinite void.

But just as the world began to spin around her, she felt a hand in hers. Cecelia. Heat flowed into her skin, up her arms and down her back and chest, until the raw, jagged edge of pain inside of her melted.

From down the road, there was the rumble of the truck engine. But Cecelia didn’t let go. The sea seemed calmer now, moving in gentle, rhythmic waves beneath the moon.

The truck was only a few meters away when it cut out abruptly, the driver peering over at them from behind the wheel.

“Are you ready, Helene?” Cecelia asked quietly. “To come back with me to Rouen. Is that your choice?”

Helene released Cecelia’s hand. She knew the darkness would only deepen, that if there was an end to the occupation, to the war, it would only be achieved through more bombs and battlesand devastation. But as she stood on that cliffside, she knew she had to try to fix what she could of this broken world, do what she had spent her life watching her mother do for the people who needed her.

Helene looked back over the channel, her eyes lingering on the horizon, where the edge of the world she knew met the vast, unfathomable future gleaming just beyond it. Cecelia’s words from earlier that week echoed in her mind. Only now, for the first time, she understood their meaning.

“I didn’t choose this,” Helene said now. “I didn’t choose any of it. But I’m here. And I’m ready.”

CROZET, VIRGINIA

2019

19

LOUISE

Peter was sitting on the garden bench when Louise walked into the backyard. The dense, ancient limbs of the huge magnolia tree were a canopy above him, the branches dotted with sweet perfumed white flowers the size of cantaloupes.

“You were supposed to go to the guest house,” Louise said as she approached him. Each footstep took effort as she crossed the yard. Her entire body felt heavy, weighted down by the events of the evening. Her mind held an overwhelming swirl of emotions. It made the night take on a surreal, hazy quality, as though she were meeting Peter in a dream.

“Funny thing,” Peter said when she sat beside him, his expression slightly dazed. “I don’t really remember sitting down. Your grandmother told me to leave. And I left. But I guess this is as far as I got.”

For a few minutes, neither of them spoke. Louise heard the distant crunch of gravel, the murmur of female voices, her mother and grandmother setting off down the road on their walk. She was acutely aware of the proximity of Peter’s body,the rise and fall of his chest with his breathing, of how impossible it all was, that they were there together on that summer night, that out of the infinite, spinning parts of the universe, their paths had collided.

“You were right, you know,” Louise finally said as a small bird took off from a branch of the magnolia, briefly silhouetted against the velvet blue sky. “I was lying. About your knee. About the accident. About how I brought you back.”

“I know,” Peter said quietly. “I don’t understand it, but I know.”

“And I think you were right about New York too,” she said, her voice amplified in the stillness of the night. She felt like she was back at the swimming hole, about to step off a ledge. She plunged forward. She didn’t want to waste any more time, not after that night, not when she suddenly saw life for exactly how brief and fragile it was. She didn’t want to spend four years studying a subject because it was easy, because the answers were always simple, far removed from the messiness of real life.

“I don’t want to go,” she said quickly, before she could stop herself. “Not to the summer program. Not to NYU in the fall. I want to stay here, for now, figure out what I really want. But I know it’s not New York. Getting buried in student debt to live in a city I don’t even really love.”

“What changed your mind?”

Louise motioned toward the orchard, the horizon painted by the mountains. “All of this.” She hesitated. “Helping Sarah. Saving you.”

She shivered despite the heat of the evening, felt a little ripple move across her body, a pull away from the solitude and secrecy of generations, toward one person she knew would handle the truth with care.

“Do you want me to show you how?”

Peter nodded, his mouth half-open. Louise stood up from the bench.

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