The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue - V. E. Schwab Page 0,167
who knows they’re in control.
“Why should I?” he asks. “Why would I?”
Addie has a dozen answers, but she scrambles to find the right words, the ones that might appease the dark, but before she can find them, Luc reaches out, and lifts her chin, and she expects him to play out their old, tired lines, to mock her, or ask for her soul, but he does neither.
“Spend the night with me,” he says. “Tomorrow. Let us have a proper anniversary. Give me that, and I’ll consider freeing Mr. Strauss from his obligations.” His mouth twitches. “If, that is, you can persuade me.”
It is a lie, of course.
It is a trap, but Addie has no other choice.
“I accept,” she says, and the darkness smiles, and then dissolves around her.
She stands on the sidewalk, alone, until her heart steadies, and then walks back into the Merchant.
But Henry is gone.
* * *
She finds him at home, sitting in the dark.
He’s on the edge of the bed, the blankets still tangled from their afternoon nap. He stares ahead, into the distance, the way he did that summer night on the rooftop, after the fireworks.
And Addie realizes that she is going to lose him, the way she has lost everyone.
And she doesn’t know if she can do it, not again, not this time.
Hasn’t she lost enough?
“I’m sorry,” he whispers as she crosses to him.
“I’m so sorry,” he says, as she runs her fingers through his hair.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she pleads.
Henry is quiet for a moment, and then he says, “How do you walk to the end of the world?” He looks up at her. “I wanted to hold on to every step.”
A soft, shuddering sigh.
“My uncle had cancer, when I was still in college. It was terminal. The doctors gave him a few months, and he told everyone, and do you know what they did? They couldn’t handle it. They were so caught up in their grief, they mourned him before he was even dead. There’s no way to un-know the fact that someone is dying. It eats away all the normal, and leaves something wrong and rotten in its place. I’m sorry, Addie. I didn’t want you to look at me that way.”
She climbs into bed, and pulls him down beside her.
“I’m sorry,” he’s saying, soft and steady as a prayer.
They lie there, face-to-face, their fingers intertwined.
“I’m sorry.”
And Addie forces herself to ask, “How long do you have left?”
Henry swallows. “A month.”
The words land like a blow on tender skin.
“A little more,” he says. “Thirty-six days.”
“It’s after midnight,” Addie whispers.
Henry exhales. “Then thirty-five.”
Her grip tightens around his, and his tightens back, and they hold on until it hurts, as if any minute someone might try to pull them apart, as if the other might slip free, and disappear.
Occupied France
November 23, 1944
VII
Her back hits the rough stone wall.
The cell grinds shut, and German soldiers laugh beyond the bars as Addie slumps to the floor, coughing blood.
A handful of men huddle in one corner of the cell, slouched and murmuring. At least they don’t seem to care that she’s a woman. The Germans have noticed. Though they caught her dressed in nondescript trousers and coat, though she kept her hair pulled back, she knew by the way they scowled and leered that they could tell her sex. She told them in a dozen different tongues what she would do if they came near, and they laughed, and satisfied themselves with beating her senseless.
Get up, she wills her weary body.
Get up, she wills her tired bones.
Addie forces herself to her feet, stumbles to the front of the cell. She wraps her hands around the frozen steel, pulls at it until her muscles scream, until the bars groan, but they do not move. She pries at the bolts until her fingers bleed, and a soldier slams his hand against the bars and threatens to use her body as kindling.
She is such a fool.
She is a fool for thinking it would work. For thinking that forgettable was the same as invisible, that it would protect her here.
She should have stayed in Boston, where the worst she had to worry about was wartime rations and winter cold. She should never have come back. It was foolish honor, and stubborn pride. It was the last war, and the fact she ran away, fled across the Atlantic instead of facing the danger at home. Because somehow, despite it all, that’s what France will always be.