Half Life by Jillian Cantor (easy to read books for adults list txt) 📕

tried that. The French Academy refuses to publish it without results or the backing of an established scientist. And Jacques is busy with his own work.”

“Well, you can’t give up,” I implored him. “You will find a way.”

“Perhaps,” he said, his voice trailing off, as if he didn’t believe me. “Perhaps.”

THE NEXT MORNING, A FEW HOURS BEFORE JACQUES AND Hela were to present their acceptance speech, Pierre knocked on our door and asked if we would like to take a walk, explore the city with him.

“Go ahead,” Bronia implored me. “I’m feeling tired. I’m going to rest a bit, and I’ll meet you both at the ceremony later.” She’d come in late last night, and I wondered just how much brännvin she’d allowed herself so far away from her husband, children, home, and patients.

I was wearing my nicest dress, a blue chiffon that had been made just for me in Paris many years earlier for Hela’s wedding. And I had been overjoyed to find it still fit before I left. It was a little tight around the middle, not the most comfortable for walking around, exploring a city, but I took a breath, kissed Bronia goodbye, and left to walk with Pierre.

We walked slowly, not saying much of anything at first, as we had already exhausted our talk of work the night before. We took in the sights and sounds and smells of this new and beautiful city. All around us there was the bluest water and quaintest red roofs, and now that we were here today, walking in the daylight, it felt strangely like we were on a holiday. Together.

We walked along the river path in the beautiful, flowering Djurgården, and I wondered out loud about the various species of flowers, different than the ones I knew so well, native to Poland.

“I have been thinking so much of you, Marya,” Pierre said suddenly, out of nowhere. “Ever since I returned to Paris, I have been greatly missing our hikes.” He had written that to me in a recent letter, too.

“Yes,” I agreed now. “The Carpathians were so beautiful last summer, weren’t they?”

“The mountains, yes,” he said. “But I mean I’ve been missing this. Your company. Our talks.”

We had talked about everything on our hikes, science and family and love and loss. About getting older and failing and happiness. And the truth was, I missed our talks too. Back in Krakow I talked to Klara and to Professor Mazur. Kaz and I gave each other an obligatory peck on the lips in the mornings, and exchanged quick pleasantries, but I was focused on Klara, and then my work in the lab. He had his own work, and in the evenings, we were both much too tired to truly talk as we once had when we were younger.

“Look,” Pierre said, tugging gently on my hand. “Look across the water, Marya. Swans.”

I did as he asked, and there they were, swimming toward us, an entire splendid family of swans in tandem, their beautiful white long necks bobbing across the water.

The male and female pecked each other playfully, and then Pierre took my other hand, pulled me close enough to him that I could feel his chest against mine, his breath against my face. “Marya,” he said my name, his voice raspier than usual.

I had the strangest feeling that he wanted to kiss me, and that if I let him, if I kissed him back, everything would change.

“I can’t,” I whispered, our faces close enough that my breath became his breath, my words became his words. I felt the frown that stretched across his face in my own self, a heaviness that coursed through my entire body, all the way down to my toes.

“What if you and I were destined to be together?” he said softly.

It sounded so logical in his quiet voice. But I did not believe in destiny. I believed in science, in making our own choices. And if I kissed him now, if I let myself get even an inch closer to him, I would be making a choice I could never take back, the way Kaz had, many years ago.

I pulled away from him, took a step back. “I almost moved to Paris once,” I said. “But then I got married instead. And now I have a life in Krakow, a beautiful daughter.”

“And what if we had met in Paris, so many years ago? Everything might have been different,” he said quietly.

We stood there for a little while longer, staring at the water, watching the swans, not touching, not saying anything else at all. And perhaps we were both imagining it, what could’ve happened, what might’ve happened, if once, so many years earlier, I had stepped on that train.

BACK IN KRAKOW, I THOUGHT ABOUT THAT MOMENT IN THE Djurgården with Pierre a lot. At night, when Kaz was working late in his lab and I was lying all alone in bed in the darkness, I reimagined it over and over again. I moved in just a little closer, put my lips on his. Felt the thrilling scratch of his beard against my chin. I held on to him, inhaled him. He did not smell like the pine cones and peppermint of my husband, but of the fire of my lab, the flowers of Sceaux.

There was a choice. There was always a choice. Had I made the wrong one? Could there be a happiness for me with Pierre that I would never have with Kaz? Or was it wrong to believe that my happiness, in and of itself, was inherently connected to any man at all? Maybe my true happiness was in the sound of Klara’s piano notes, in the smell of Professor Mazur’s smoke-filled lab.

“Mama,” Klara’s small voice called out for me in the darkness one night, interrupting my thoughts. I pushed Pierre away again, to the deepest back corner of my mind.

“What is it, mój mały kurczak?”

“I had a bad dream.” Her voice quivered, thick with tears. I