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

the extravagance of a second home, a vacation home, now it felt the most practical decision they had ever made, as there was strange protection from the war here. Even though the occasional warplane would buzz overhead, it was only a wayward and distant reminder.

Hela and Jacques had a full house: Marie and Lou, Pierre, me and Klara, and their neighbor from Paris, who had recently been abandoned by her good-for-nothing husband, as she told me the first morning over breakfast, Jeanne Langevin.

I had not seen Pierre in person for the past few years, though we had continued with the occasional letter, mostly to share our advancements in our respective labs. Pierre had finally gotten Jacques to take interest in his research and to help him explore the possibility of the second radioactive element he believed to be in the pitchblende. But everything was left behind in Paris when they fled, and their favorite topic of conversation each morning in L’Arcouëst was fretting over the lab’s current status and safety.

Now, seeing him again, he really had aged. His beard was completely gray, he walked a little slower, his shoulders stooped. But what I noticed most of all was his relationship with Jeanne Langevin. The two of them strolled along the beach together each morning, arm in arm. Pierre would stop to bend down and collect seashells or other treasures, until his suit pockets were filled or until Jeanne would seem to lose interest and start to walk on, without him. He would run to catch up to her, catch her hand in his own. I watched them from the window enough mornings that finally Hela said, “Marya what is so interesting out there on the beach that has you staring and staring? Is it the water, hmmm?” This was my first time being so near such a large body of water, and it frightened me too much to go in, though Klara swam in it with no fear, a strong swimmer from all her summers at the lake with Jakub.

Hela peered over my shoulder, saw Pierre and Jeanne walking together, and frowned. “Leave it be, Marya,” she said softly. “Poor Pierre has been lonely for so many years, and he’s finally found a companion in Jeanne.”

“I’m confused,” I said. “Is she still married or not?”

“It’s complicated,” Hela said. “Her husband, Paul, ran off with a house servant and their two youngest children last year, leaving her with nothing. Their marriage was quite difficult. She always told me how terribly he treated her, but I’m afraid I never really paid enough attention, until he left. I suppose she and Paul are still legally married, for all the good it does her now. She’s had a rough year. And Pierre makes her happy.”

“A house servant?” I repeated, stuck on that part, softening toward Jeanne. I felt sad that not only had her husband betrayed her, but also that he had abandoned her, taken her children. How awful. That poor woman.

Hela shrugged. “It’s not unusual in Paris these days for a man to take a mistress of that standing. But he certainly doesn’t run off with her.” She said it like it was so commonplace, nothing. And I turned to her, raised my eyebrows, wondering if Jacques had ever taken a mistress. “I’m a scientist first. Jacques’s partner in the lab. His wife second,” she said, addressing the question I hadn’t even asked out loud. “What Jacques does on his own is his own business. But, he would never leave me.” She said it so matter-of-factly, like his indiscretions were of no consequence to her.

I remembered Hela as a girl, my sister-twin who smelled of lemon and corn poppies, always filled with light and hope, and now, here she was before me, a famous scientist, but was she made of stone?

“I still think about how desperate Kazimierz was to get you back that morning he came to our apartment in Warsaw. You were already at the train station and you almost left for Paris without him.” Hela was still talking, and now her voice sounded far away. “I’ve always envied you, Marya, for having a love like that.”

“Oh, Hela,” I said, putting my hand on her shoulder. “Kazimierz is no saint, believe me.”

Still, all these years later, the thought of him and Leokadia together hurt, a physical pain deep in my gut. But it was so long ago, I barely thought of it. Kaz would not leave me, and I would not leave him. We had built a life together, a family. But I didn’t think we had the kind of life Hela should envy. Not when she had a Nobel Prize, a lab in Paris, and a vacation home in Brittany.

“Do you ever wonder how different our lives might be now if I had gotten on that train to Paris?” I asked her.

On the beach, Pierre grabbed onto Jeanne’s hand. She smiled at something he said to her, and they continued walking down the shore, hand in hand. Perhaps Hela was right, that they were good for each other, that Jeanne deserved happiness with Pierre, whether she was still legally married or not.

Hela laughed a little. “But then you wouldn’t have Klara, and I might not have a Nobel Prize,” she said.

“Or Marie,” I added.

“Right. Or Marie,” she repeated softly. “And then . . . who knows where we’d both be standing right now, in the midst of this god-awful war.”

How hard it was to imagine our lives without our beautiful daughters, and perhaps everything we had done, every choice we had made had led us to them, to our safety here together during this war. And then none of it felt like it could be wrong.

Hela took my hand and pulled me away from the window. “Come, let’s leave these two lovebirds be, and I’ll show you the paper I’ve been writing up on electromagnetism. I think you’ll find it fascinating.”

I WOKE UP EARLY IN L’ARCOUËST, BEFORE THE FIRST LIGHT, MY stomach aching with