Page 93 of The Secrets We Left Behind
“Let me look at you,” he said, stroking her face. “You’re the only thing that’s kept me going all this time, and I had this terrible feeling that I’d finally make it back to you and you’d be gone.”
She didn’t tell him about the bullet that had skimmed her thigh and almost killed her, or the knife wounds to her stomach; she could so easily have perished, but somehow, miraculously, she’d lived to see the end of the war that had claimed the lives of everyone she loved. Everyone, except Harry.
A shiver ran through her as she remembered her son behind her. “There’s someone I’d very much like you to meet, Harry,” she told him, smiling up at him as she turned, keeping one arm looped around his waist.
Before she could tell Louis to come closer, Harry cleared his throat and pulled away from her, dropping to one knee. She saw his mind working as he perhaps tried to figure out who the boy might be.
“Elise,” he started, and she laughed as Louis blinked back at them. “I have a son?”
“You do. His name is Louis, for my brother.”
Harry’s arms were open and he dropped to both knees as Louis slowly, tentatively, walked forward.
“Louis, this is your papa,” Elise said, switching to French as she waved him over. “Come and say hello. Your papa has come home!”
Louis took a few more steps, glancing at his mother before the biggest grin she’d ever seen spread across his face as he sprinted and then launched into his father’s arms. Her usually shy little boy almost knocked Harry clean off his haunches, but he rightedhimself and managed to stand with Louis in his arms. Arms that were bone-thin, but still had enough strength to hold his son.
“I never thought I’d see this day. I never thought for a moment that you could have survived, that you’d make it,” she said, crying now as she embraced Harry, wrapping her arms around the man she’d mourned for and yet still loved for so many years, and the little boy she’d fought so ferociously to protect from the minute she’d discovered she was pregnant. She’d never, ever let herself believe that Harry could be alive, not after all the loss she’d suffered, not after Adelaide.
“Well I’m here now, and I never intend on leaving you again,” Harry whispered, his lips pressed to their son’s head now. “And to think I had this little man waiting for me, too. I only wish I’d known.”
Elise slipped her hand into his then and led him inside, her heart fuller than it had been in as long as she could remember.
An hour later, when Harry had eaten a small meal and Louis was contentedly playing with his toy truck in the living room, Elise sat beside the bath on a stool as Harry lowered himself into the warm water. She’d clipped his beard with scissors before he’d undressed, and now that he was lying, head back and eyes closed, she soaped his cheeks and used a blade to shave him. At first she was hesitant, not wanting to cut him, but the more she slid it across his skin, the more confident she became and slowly, before her eyes, her Harry started to appear.
They never said a word as she soaped his back and washed his hair, carefully trailing her sponge across deep scars that hadn’t been there when she’d last touched him, his bones protruding as if he’d been starved for months, if not years. When she was finally done, and steam had long since stopped rising from the water, she stood and reached for a towel, holding it out to him as he stepped from the bath.
She should have been embarrassed at seeing him naked after so long, but nothing about seeing Harry again was as awkward as she’d imagined.
“Sit here,” she said, pulling the stool in front of the mirror on the wall. “I’ll cut your hair while it’s wet.”
Harry wrapped the towel around his waist and sat, and she took the chance to wrap her arms around him, leaning down from behind and pressing her cheek to his. A cry escaped her lips then, a cry she’d tried so hard to swallow down, and tears started to flow down Harry’s freshly razored cheeks too. They both cried, quietly, arms around one another, until Elise finally found the strength to rise.
“I’m sorry,” she said, laughing as she wiped her eyes. “I just—”
“Can’t believe it?” he asked.
She smiled down at him, wishing she didn’t feel so sad, but unable to stop it. “No, I can’t. I don’t think I’ll believe it for days, maybe even weeks. It’s too good to be true after all the pain.”
Harry’s eyes found hers in the mirror as she stood behind him, her hands in his hair. “I had terrible thoughts of you with someone else. I thought if I found you, if I actually made it all the way back here, there was a chance you’d have a husband, that you’d have long since forgotten about me.”
“Never,” she whispered, bending down and pressing a slow, warm kiss to his lips when he turned his head. “I’ve been too busy looking after our son and telling him all about his brave papa who sacrificed everything to make sure I could live.”
She ran a comb through his hair then, standing behind him and staring at his reflection in the mirror, hating how hollow his cheeks seemed. But he was still as handsome as ever, even without enough meat on his bones.
“Tell me what happened that night, Cate. Did Jack make it?”
“I hope so. He made it to the boat, and Cate with him.” Elise’s bottom lip started to tremble and she bit down on it, trying tostop the sudden, sharp wave of emotion building within her. She never let herself think of that night; she never went there in her memories, because there had never been anyone to look after her, to pick up the pieces if she let herself fall.
“And what of you?” he asked. “What happened to you, Elise?”
“I stayed to fight,” she said simply. “I was transient until I was due to give birth, and then I helped in any way I could in the background. The resistance became a powerful force, and I was with them every step of the way.”
She started to cut his hair then, blinking through her tears as that time, the time she’d lost Harry and her sister, came back to her.Don’t go there, don’t go there.
“And you? How is it that you’re even alive?” she asked, not wanting to talk about herself.
“I only just survived,” he murmured, tears glinting in his eyes, reflecting back at her in the mirror as he bravely kept his chin lifted. “I survived almost five years as a prisoner of the Germans, and the only thing that kept me going was you. It was a hell like I could never have imagined, something I will never speak of for as long as I live, and the fact that any of us walked out of there alive ...”
