Chapter 26
Running never protects him from anything.
Every time he stops, they catch up to him, descending like bomber jets to pummel him alive.
There’s horror and intensity everywhere he looks, exploding without warning.
One minute a bloke’s beside you, teasing, laughing, demanding, being human.
The next… boom. Mangled body parts, human faces racked with shock and pain.
Blood. Torn flesh. Humans destroyed by humans.
Flick, hissss.
A bridge exploding. Bodies flying. Screams curdle his blood, he’s clawing at the vines. Tangled in brush and leaves and…bedsheets.
Bedsheets. He surfaces with a splitting pain down the middle of his forehead.
He thrashes and twists, panting, gasping, sweat lining every crevice of his body.
He freezes, heart still ricocheting painfully.
Muffled wind howls outside, with rain beating against the windows, but the cottage shields him from the worst of it.
He scrambles out of bed and lights a candle.
Flick, hissss.
He shivers. Nausea pulls at his belly, and he grabs the doorpost, bracing himself. Memories are harmless because they’re in the past. They’ve nothing to do with the present.
But they’re always present.
They poison his future.
He towels off his skin with yesterday’s shirt and gulps in air. Downstairs, he sets about being productive—fumbling with the tea kettle, dropping a cup, shoving hair off his forehead, then wiping his sweaty palm. He rummages for food, finding none.
Then a soft touch on his ankle. A small black body twines itself around his foot, white-tipped tail flicking back and forth. William scoops Persephone up and holds her to his face, where she rumbles her gladness and nuzzles him. “How is the princess of the palace?”
She mews and he pulls out the jar of fish bits, feeding them to her. Then she climbs up his arm and perches on his shoulder as if to say, when are we going?
With a sigh he lowers himself into the ancient chair with wide arms and watches the sun crest the water, streaking it with gold.
Persephone clambers across the back of his neck to the other shoulder and the tension melts down his back like the last sparks of fireworks fading though the night sky. Only soreness remains.
That’s what love—simple, authentic love—does for a man. It gently dances across the tension of his life and loosens it, then sits in the soreness with him while he recovers.
He closes his eyes and sees Helen on their garden swing, her long legs crossed over his. Helen, smiling down from their window. Helen, nestling beside him without a word about the terrible day at the plant, simply re-centering him with her presence.
How dearly I miss you, my love. I don’t know how I’ve managed without you for five entire years. Missing you is suffocating.
It’s time. He can no longer go on as he is.
Merryn sparks hope in him. That’s why William can’t get that woman in white from his mind.
Even while his hands gut fish and toss them into crates later that day, his thoughts wander to Merryn and the missing pieces of her story.
The very real possibility of finding her, and what that would mean for his story. For Helen’s.
Somehow his legs carry him, after his ten-hour shift at the docks, into Newlyn rather than to Dunn Cottage. The streets are crowded as the workday ends, but no one looks directly at him.
Why would they?
He takes Persephone from his bag, dropping a kiss on her tiny nose and perching her on his shoulder. “We’re getting close. I can feel it.” Merryn’s story, a distant melody, is growing louder. He’s catching pieces of it now, and he’s hungry for more.
He turns into St. Peter’s churchyard and takes a breath. A local Cornish man might have attended the Methodist, but when one wishes to find traces of a visiting artist like Covington, he looks in the Anglican Church.
Hat in hand, William approaches the church office and scratches his bearded chin before knocking.
Helen would have wanted him to shave, but William is so accustomed to his appearance, the wiry, itchy feel of the overgrown beard, that it has become his new self.
The man who walked with a bounce in his step, clean-shaven and alert, is a stranger now.
When a cleric answers his knock with a startled stare and takes a step back, William’s shoulders bow. “Begging your pardon, sir. If I c-c-c-ould see the re-re-register.”
A pause. “The birth registry?”
“Muh-muh-marriage. Please.”
One eyebrow arches up and the young cleric looks him over, his expression gentling. “Perhaps you’d care to wash your hands first. It seems you’ve had a long journey.”
Heat flushes up William’s neck—which makes him grateful for the beard. He follows the man to a small table with a bowl and pitcher and cleanses his hands as best he can. His fingertips are caked with grime. The foul stench of fish lingers but is less after a good toweling.
No matter. He isn’t here to impress anyone.
Then the man places three huge volumes on the table and slips out. Hungrily, William throws open the record of marriage banns, and he skims for a familiar name.
In 1908, 1909, nothing. But then in 1910, his heart flutters as his finger crosses the line, Covington and Dunn. With one hand protectively on Persephone, he lowers into the rickety chair and reads the entry.
Covington, Rupert and Dunn, Merryn petition for marriage. Banns read July six, thirteen, and twenty. Marriage license granted, officiated by Rev. Reginald Harris, Vicar, Newlyn.
He runs his finger over the words, memorizing them. Twisting the kaleidoscope to see the mysterious Merryn in this new light.
Covington’s wife. She is his wife.
It isn’t sufficient to authenticate the painting as his work, but it’s plenty to convince him.
The painting is a Covington. After calling out his thanks, William shuts the book and walks back into the fading daylight, stretching stiff muscles.
He wanders until a large chapel-like stone building catches his eye: Newlyn School of Art.
Stepping into the public gallery, he glances around the large open space with wide, sunny windows.
Portraits of artists line the east wall in the hushed expanse, and he quickly locates the one he wants.
Rupert Covington is a striking young man with dark eyes and a neat mustache against pale skin.
The photograph’s sepia tones show off the striking contrast, the faraway look of a visionary artist.
“Help you, sir?”
William spins to face a tall man with elegantly combed silver hair and patient expression. “I uh…no.”
“Covington cuts quite a figure, doesn’t he? Made a similar impression at the school.”
“You knew him?”
The man shakes his head. “Not well. But the lore surrounding his life makes me wish I had taken the time while we were here together.”
“Might I trouble you to—that is, what became of him? Of his wife?”
A smile tugs at the man’s mouth. “Depends on who you’ve spoken with. Some say he married many times, others say he never married—although that’s been disproven.”
“I found his name. In the re-re-registry.”
The man’s eyebrows rise, hands clutched behind his back. “Did you, indeed? And what did it say?”
William ignores the question. “Did he ever paint people?”
“He was certainly no portraitist. He’d have been ashamed of that title.”
“But did he ever paint them?”
The man rocks back on his shiny heels, a knowing smile. “Officially, no. But I happen to know he painted many portraits of the same woman.”
A charge zings through his chest. “And…what became of them? The…paintings.”
“Burned.”
“By whom?”
“Him.” The man came to stand beside him, staring up at the photograph of the enigmatic artist. “One day in 1912 or 1913, he shoved every canvas with her face on it into a stove and lit them on fire.” That had occurred before she’d written in her journal, hadn’t it? The first entry had been in 1913.
Which means she’d forgotten her husband.
What kind of love leaves no trace upon its bearer?
He swallows. A fleeting image of Helen marrying another man slices through him.
He’s imagined it happening so many different ways—in a large church, a tiny country chapel, a hillside dotted with wildflowers.
Her bold, brilliant smile occurred in every version.
She has every right to a happily-ever-after. He’ll help her achieve it, if he can.
William stares up at Covington’s face. “I don’t suppose there’s any way of proving those paintings existed, is there?”
“I’m not even certain of my own memory of them. I’ve heard so many differing stories. He’s rather a legend, as you can imagine.”
“So I’ve heard.” William shoves his hands into his pockets. “Why did he burn them?”
The man shrugs. “Temperamental artist.”
Broken man. William stares at the portrait—had it been taken before or after his wife had forgotten him? “Did he ever paint her again? After burning the paintings?”
The man inhales audibly, then releases it. “I suppose he might have. He left Newlyn around the summer of 1913, he and his wife, and hasn’t had much to say to the public since.”
That’s the year of the journal. The year she returned to Cornwall in search of her past.
“He’s a rather private man, and he hasn’t released much information on his personal life. Even to this day.”
“So he’s still married? To the same woman?”
“I would assume—if she’s alive. Rumor around the art community is that they are happily settled in some remote part of France or Italy. They don’t welcome visitors, though.”
“Of course not.” What happened to you, Covington?
He stares into those eyes, willing him to speak, to open up and explain why he burned the paintings…
and what happened after that. Merryn was searching for him, not far along the coast. Did they find one another?
William needs them to have a happy ending, a glorious reunion—an impossibility becoming possible.
William needs to live out a happy love story through them.
As William turns to leave, the man rushes to catch him. “I just remembered something. You know, it’s been so many years and I never knew how valuable information on Covington would become.”
“Of course.”
“She came to the gallery once, though it was a lodge in those days. I’d been trying not to eavesdrop, but it was rather a spectacle. It was the only time I ever saw her, but I’m nearly positive she was the woman in his paintings. It’s hard to say now, since not a single one remains.”
Oh, but it does.
He painted her again, after the fire. He must have. Or somehow, one had survived the burning and ended up hidden in Dunn Cottage.
William strides back into the gallery and stares up at the mysterious artist. So many questions only the man himself could answer. What he wouldn’t pay for even the tiniest glimpse into the man’s life that year, when he painted Merryn again.