Chapter 8
The truth is sharp and jagged. I don’t wish to know who I was.
I only wish to become who I am now—AJ Winthrop’s wife.
As we near the train station, Henry Gould’s tension has leaked onto me and I cannot keep still.
Some people are always a bit edgy, looking for peace as if it’s a destination just around the next corner.
I’m one of them—especially when faced with the mystery of who I am.
It’s too much a threat to what I love most.
“We don’t have to do this, if you don’t wish it,” says AJ in my ear.
“Don’t be re…re…” Words twist and splice in my head. “Re…”
“Dundant?”
“Ridiculous.” I grasp my bag. “I’ll manage.”
We climb from the Packard near the platform and AJ pulls out my carpet bag and a worn valise. Did he stow it in the automobile before we left? This sort of careful planning doesn’t seem like AJ.
Henry Gould bids us a grim farewell, and a tiny bubble of warning bursts inside, but the Packard is gone before I can pinpoint the cause.
“Don’t worry, I packed your words.” AJ smiles proudly, rocking back on his heels.
I shoot a glance at the carpet bag perched on my toes. Surely he cannot mean my silly pastime. But indeed, I dig out my jar of words. “How did you find these?”
“It’s my right and my curse as a husband to be nosy.” He winks. “I rather enjoyed packing your—ahem—garments.”
My face flames as I stare at the toes of my boots. “You promised.”
“To give you space, yes. Your linens are fair game.” He’s watching me, amused. “The words in the jar,” he says casually. “What are they for?”
“An assignment from Dr. Bartlett. He’s the specialist Lady St. Laurent insisted I see.”
“Of course. To make up for the…right. Yes. Did it help?”
“A bit.” I lower onto a bench.
It became a secret hobby of mine, compiling large words in that jar and practicing in private, hurdling over their syllables like a horse clearing a fence so they don’t trip me up later.
It’s one unseen aspect of memory loss—you still possess instinctual knowledge like lifting fork to mouth, placing one foot before the other, but those frilly extras in life—like larger, more impressive words—fall off the overcrowded mountaintop of your memory.
You know what they mean, but the exact description is just out of reach.
“You managed to recall your name, at least.”
“Not exactly. There was a man who’d been traveling beside me on the train when I arrived in Cheltenham. He saw the accident and told them I’d introduced myself to him as Merryn something. So I had that much, at least, to begin with.”
“Sounds like this expert was a waste, then.” He props his feet onto the top of his worn valise.
“Almost.” Exactly one memory clarified itself in his stuffy old office, and it haunts me again now, menacing and dangerous.
I can still picture his odd face coming far too close to mine.
“Think of your subconscious imaginings,” he prompted.
“I’m guessing you remember no names, no details.
Am I correct? What you recall is context.
Sights, sounds, smells.” Dr. Bartlett, a balding man with dark eyebrows that winged up over inquisitive eyes, was extremely interested in the particulars of my case. “Now. Tell me. What do you see?”
I did as he asked, and a lovely, dark-haired woman materialized in my mind—gentle curves and twinkling eyes, bending near and speaking softly.
The vague memory surfaced like a bubble, prismed with color and light, and I dared not speak the details aloud for fear it would burst. Yet it’s only right to tell AJ about her.
“There was a woman. Someone from my childhood. He helped me pull out memories of her.”
“Mother?” asks AJ.
“Perhaps. But let’s not talk about the past. There’s so much to discuss—such as, where are we going?” This man doesn’t normally have plans, he has fun.
“Funny, I was about to ask you the same thing.” He slides toward me on the bench, sneaking one arm around me from behind. “So, wife, where are we going?”
I look out over the crowds of people, all with places to go. A past…and a future. Roots. Yet my past was always a ghost that haunted me rather than a treasure to be recovered. “I suppose I should visit that physician again. See about more treatments to restore my memory.”
AJ studies me. “Or not.” He leans back and tips his hat forward to shade his face. “It isn’t hurting anything, is it? You going about your life as it is, past or no past?”
My soul aches to embrace his apathy, the easier route. I’ve been happily choosing that route for three years now.
“Come now, luv, let’s start a new life. Rid ourselves of the past.”
I shake my head. Perhaps if there was no Sabine. If Cecil had…anyone. “Sabine will surely win.”
“You’re right.” His nostrils flare. “I will not let her take what’s ours. We’ll simply have to find a way.”
The sudden firmness in his voice gives me a chill. “You think any judge would award me an inheritance and a small child under the circumstances?”
“You’re not in an asylum yet. They’ll have to prove you mad first.”
“And if they do? How often do they release a person deemed mad?”
He shifts on the bench. “I’ve not tracked the cases.”
Never. It is never. Once the stain of madness is upon a person’s name, it can only spread. “They’ll lock me away. For good.”
“Hire a solicitor. Fight fire with the same.”
“With what money, Ansel?”
“Oh, who can tell? It’ll work out, though. These things always do.”
They have. They truly have, in my brief experience.
But I always had someone watching out for me.
Now…I have no one. Save a husband who is poorer, as it turns out, than I am.
He’s given up the tiny room he’s been letting outside Cheltenham, assuming we’d remain for a time at Lady St. Laurent’s home, which I now have no claim on whatsoever.
The sum total of what I own is in the worn bag at my feet, and we have no home.
No money and no prospects, and no Cecil.
Nowhere to keep him, even, unless I can claim my inheritance.
“She’ll come looking for me. I’m sure of it. ”
“So we evade them until we figure something out. Duck and run.” He points at the train huffing into the station. “Let Gould work his magic in the hearings.”
Evade Sabine St. Laurent. Like outrunning a plague. No, a poison. The snake has already bitten, and it is only a matter of time, so I must find the antidote. If one exists.
Another train chugs into the station and there’s a flurry of activity.
“Your family. Let’s call upon your family.” I’d heard only a single word on his parents—deceased. Nothing on the others.
“Whyever would we do that?”
“Sabine won’t know where to look for us. Have you any cousins? A widowed aunt who might enjoy the company?”
“I’ve heard the South of France is quite lovely. Rather secluded.”
“AJ, your family. Where are they? Surely there’s one—”
“That’ll do, now. Pick a place, my lady,” he says with a wide wave of his arms. “Any place in the world and we shall make it our home until we tire of it.”
I close my eyes, mind buzzing with a niggling discomfort and that disquieting word: home.
But I do have one somewhere. When my mind floats, it always goes to one place. “AJ, what about the seashore?”
He cocks an eyebrow.
“We don’t have to put down roots this moment, do we? Most people have a wedding trip.”
His mouth is a straight line. “So they do. But that isn’t what you have in mind, is it? Why the seashore, exactly?”
I sit straighter, meeting his gaze. “There’s only one way to avoid the asylum, AJ. One sure way.”
“What? What is it?”
For so long they’ve poked at the surface, these hazy memories, and I’ve shoved them down. Mostly with a small flick, but now they’re coming on stronger, more insistent. Those orange blossoms swept me back to the seashore, and it has been nearly tangible since then.
So are the memories of a cozy home. Which is where? With whom?
I’ll have to let the memories tell me. To sweep over the cracked surface of my life and flood them with who I was before, the beautiful and the ugly.
It’s the only way. It is possible for a person to access dormant memories, Dr. Bartlett said.
Provide the right context, and there’s every chance the memories associated with it will come flooding back.
I have the key to freedom. I merely have to turn it. “AJ…I have to go back.”
Those images and sensations always swept up on me like a wave.
Now, instead of running for dry land the moment they wet my feet, I have to wade in.
No, dive. Swim deep and float in them, joining the past self with this new one to somehow form a whole person.
Only whole people are free. I’m coming for you, Cecil. I won’t let them keep me from you.
A whistle sounds, and people flurry across the platform, standing back from the edge. AJ crosses his arms and considers me. “Back.”
“It’s probably a terrible idea,” I yell over the roar, “and it may not even work and I know we haven’t any money, but—”
“That’s not entirely true.” He lifts a leather pouch and a smile spreads over his face. “I’ve set some aside for just such an occasion.”
“Like eating?”
“We’ll do plenty of that once the inheritance comes in. Now, the special occasion is convincing my wife I’m a decent bloke who’s worth her time.”
I laugh, a pressure valve releasing.
“Any particular seashore, luv?”
I wilt back. “That’s the thing. I don’t remember. Maybe we can…look for it?”
“This will be a terribly long wedding trip.” Another smile flashes. “What do you remember? Help me see it.”
I close my eyes again and breathe. “Misty and floral and the smell of fish and…blue. But not just any blue—a very bright, iridescent blue. Almost…magical. No, celestial.” A sense of foolishness bubbles up inside.
This sounds like a dream. “But an undertone of bright, bottle-green.” And it likely is. “And sparkles.”
I crack open one eye to see if he’s rolling his eyes, but his gaze is bright. He’s leaning in. “Cornwall. That’s most definitely Cornwall.”
I stiffen at the nearness of his barely-contained delight. Doesn’t he realize what he does to me? “Why Cornwall? There are beaches along every coast of England. It might be anywhere.”
“Merryn,” he says, tracing my knuckles with one fingertip. “Sing, luv. Close your eyes and sing the one you sing when you think no one’s looking.”
I draw a breath, pause to let my soul settle back into my body, and sing in the midst of the chaos.
First thing in the morning, on Chapel Carn Brea,
To gaze at the Scillies in the blue far away,
I am tangled up in the haunting melody, and the words fall from my lips.
For this is my Cornwall, and I’ll tell you why,
Because I was born here and here I shall die.
The song melts away after the verse resolves and my eyes blink open. AJ is watching, his face aglow. “You see? It would explain so much—you’re from Cornwall, my love.”
Cornwall. I taste that word. Perhaps I’ll put it in my jar. “Where in Cornwall?” I shiver as the name slips on like a tailor-made gown.
“That’s what we must find. What do you say? Shall we go and fetch your past?”
I blink. “You mean…just ride along the whole coast? Without a schedule or a plan?”
“Correct.”
“And where’ll we stay? Are we certain there are inns along the way that’ll have us?”
“We’re not certain.”
“AJ! We cannot make such a trip. It’s absurd. It’s—”
“Fun?”
“Absurd!”
“You said that already.”
“We can’t just—just—”
“And why not?”
I exhale. “And what if there’s nothing familiar in the whole of Cornwall? What then?”
He slides closer on the bench, eyes alight. “Then I shall have an exceptionally long time alone with my wife. And a better chance of convincing her of my husbandly merits.” He brushes his lips on my forehead, down the side of my face, and nuzzles my neck until I’m tingling. Breathless.
Then he rudely pulls himself away with a whoosh of frigid air and smiles at the warm desire on my face. “Keeping my distance. As promised.”
I must breathe normally.
“Boarding!” A huff of steam rolls over our feet.
“That one goes direct to Newquay, in far West Cornwall, I believe. I’d rather start at the beginning of Cornwall, but—” He jerks his head.
I turn and spot a familiar figure in a long cape striding through the crowds, looking for me. “Sabine’s private agent.”
Ansel leaps up and extends a hand. “Shall we adventure, my lady? Into the past, so we may write the future.”
I take his hand, poised to chase my peace around another corner.
I cling to him and giggle. Of all the foolish choices I’ve made, wedding this man is not one of them.
With his help I shall rebuild my life, collecting fragmented memories and welding them together into my story.
I do love stories. Perhaps this will be exciting. A treasure hunt.
I cannot wait, I tell myself forcefully, to stumble upon the first piece of my past.