Epilogue
QUEENSTOWN, IRELAND
The final service for Inez and George Vernon was held on a mild afternoon, all of the Jolivets gathered before the grave, even Alfred, on special furlough. George’s parents, still mired in their mourning in America, had sent their best wishes but declined to venture from their home just yet.
No one had been expecting Alfred. He’d arrived at Winter Queen the very morning they were departing for Ireland, been greeted with joy, with kisses and hugs and a tearful scolding from his mother for not letting them know he was coming.
“I wasn’t awfully sure it would happen,” he’d said, young and blond and achingly handsome in his uniform. “I didn’t want to get your hopes up.”
What an upside-down world, Rita thought, even as she embraced her little brother, finally, at last, to find goodness in denying hope.
But it was a relief to have them all reunited, as brief as their time together would be, and as solemn as the occasion was.
It was a relief to stand beneath the beaming Irish sun in the green, green Irish cemetery and see her whole family—what was left of her living family—come together to honor their beloved dead.
Giuseppe was there too, of course, and as the vicar began to speak in his lilting Irish tones she found herself leaning against her fiancé a little, maybe absorbing some of his calm strength, his strong devotion. He kept his hand on her lower back, occasionally moving it in a slow, soothing circle.
Her emerald engagement ring flared in the light. The air was scented of moss and brine but the sky was cloudless, much like that sunlit May day not long past when Rita’s world had quite literally blown apart.
They stood amid a score of fresher graves like this one. Turned dirt the grass had not yet fully claimed, newly installed tombstones, different names and birthdates but every single date of death the same. May 7. May 7. May 7.
May 7, 1915.
As the vicar spoke, Rita wondered at the serenity of the land around her, even when threatened by war. At the unfathomable depths of love and loss and grief, the bottomless well of the human soul accepting it all, sometimes all at once.
Charles and Pauline had canceled the order for George’s solitary headstone and commissioned a new marker instead, one for Inez and George both.
A granite Celtic cross atop a chiseled granite base. Modern, rounded script. They’d agreed as family, the count included, on what it should say.
IN TENDER MEMORY OF
INEZ AND GEORGE LEY VERNON
BOTH YOUNG, BEAUTIFUL AND GIFTED.
VICTIMS OF THE LUSITANIA CRIME.
Blackcaps and dunnocks trilled from the trees, swished into flight above them. Rita followed their fluid turns and swoops against the heavens, where once she’d imagined angels reaching down to her.
The vicar stopped speaking. One by one, Inez’s family walked forward, each carrying a rose to toss down to the casket.
Rita went last. First a yellow rose, freshly purchased from the florist in town, but then a silk sachet filled with older but still fragrant dried petals, Autumn Damasks, that landed softly just beside her rose.
She stepped back to the grass again, her heels sinking into the spongy earth.
Giuseppe returned his hand to her back, steadying her.
She closed her eyes against the vibrant lawn, the azure sky and gold-lichened markers, concentrating only on that: the feel of him next to her, keeping her upright, warm and safe and certain.