Page 57 of The World That We Knew

HE STOOD IN THE ORCHARD. She knew him even though everything had changed. He was a young man with long dark hair, handsome, six feet tall, well muscled but too thin, a troubled look on his face. There was a halo of darkness around him that hadn’t been there before, yet when he saw her, his eyes filled with light. She came through the back door without bothering to pull on shoes, in a hurry, her hair much paler than he remembered, ash white, shimmering, but it was her, the reason he’d stayed alive.

“You,” she called out, her hands on her hips. “Julien Lévi from Paris.”

She knew him still, despite everything that had changed. He came to her slowly. He didn’t wish to rush, even though it had been such a long time. He wanted to see her standing there by the door and remember everything about it, the dress she wore, her pale bare feet, the flame of sunlight across her face, a stray curl of her hair that she brushed away.

“What are you waiting for?” she cried.

They weren’t children now, and maybe they hadn’t been then. Nearly four years had passed. She was sixteen, and he would soon be eighteen.

“Are you certain I’m who you think I am?” he said, grinning.

She didn’t bother to answer, or to wait any longer, but instead came to throw her arms around him. He had kept his promise. They broke away from each other and sank to the grass, near enough for their hips and shoulders to touch.

They took in each other’s differences, and liked what they saw. Neither wished to be anywhere other than where they were, in the doctor’s orchard at this exact moment in time. They could have told each other everything, but they wanted to go forward, not backward, and so after years of wanting nothing more than to talk, they sat in silence, their fingers laced.

This is how it ends, Julien thought.

This is how it begins, Lea knew.

Ava watched from the window, then pulled down the shade.

This is how it was always meant to be.

She baked her last loaves of rosemary bread for supper, somber. This was what Hanni had wished for, this was their covenant, this was all the time she was allowed.

The doctor came to stand in the doorway. He had been introduced to the young man who’d come for Lea. He was a well-mannered fellow who shook the doctor’s hand, thanking him for his hospitality. The haunted look in his eyes left only when he gazed at Lea. The doctor recognized him; he resembled his brother, the same handsome dark features, but with more reserve, intelligent, but wary.

“I knew Victor,” Girard said. “I knew him very well.”

“Did you?” There was that haunted look.

“And the girl he worked with. I knew her.” He had gone to the spot of the accident with a handful of white phlox to leave in Ettie’s memory. “They were extremely brave.”

It was hard to talk after that, no one wanted details, how tall the grass was in the place where Victor was arrested, how there in the field the doctor had found a perfect white tooth.

When she saw how Julien brooded when his brother was mentioned, Lea took his hand and challenged him to a chess game, which lightened his mood. Each insisted they would easily win. Ava and the doctor could hear them laughing and teasing one another in the parlor.

“Will you leave tonight?” Dr. Girard asked.

“Yes. I’ll see them to the border.”

Girard had given the boy a compass, in honor of his brother and Ettie. Now he poured himself a drink, and offered Ava one as well, but she declined. He had two women to mourn now, and perhaps he drank a little more than he should in the evenings.

“You could stay here,” he said casually.

Ava gave him a hard look. “If you’re searching for a housekeeper you should look elsewhere.”

“That’s not what I want, Ava. You’re a healer. I saw it myself. I could use your help. When the war is over, there will be so many wounded from the prison alone, we won’t have enough hands.”

“I have no training.”

“I’ll train you, or more likely you’ll train me.”

But Ava knew what would happen when they came near the border. Lea would honor her mother, and Ava would allow her to do what was meant to be.

“If life was different.” She shrugged.

The doctor remembered how she had dared to shake her fist at the angel at the window; he’d been stunned that she had such nerve, but by the next day the angel was gone.