Chapter 41 #2
AJ jolts at the name—and that it’s fitted to him.
“You’ve painted your wife too, and it is stunning. I spotted it hanging in the gallery, and it enchanted me from the first. One can see your deep love for her. You’ve done a remarkable job.”
AJ stands on the rock, knees bent, legs braced. The lightest wave could knock him down. He cannot speak, cannot correct the man’s error, and the writer misinterprets AJ’s wretched silence.
“Yes, I’ve met your wife. Lovely creature, that Merryn of the sea. Oh, by the by, give her this for me, will you? Tell her it’s from old Thom.” The man slides a book into AJ’s hand and limps away up the walk, around the rocks.
And AJ is alone with his thoughts.
He’s still staring at Thom’s book as the candle in Dunn Cottage begins to flicker, and a knock sounds at the door. He ignores it and rereads the inscription inside the front cover.
To Merryn of the sea, who has opened my eyes. Precious few can do that anymore.
I leave you with one of my personal favorites. Although it is not my most recent work, it contains one of the happiest endings I’ve ever given a love story, which is what I wish for you. May you receive Bathsheba’s sort of ending, dearest Merryn.
Yours most gratefully, Mr. Thomas Hardy.
AJ runs his fingertips over the penned name. Thomas Hardy. Thomas Hardy! So AJ has met the writer of marital chaos and confusion. So has Merryn, apparently. What could they possibly have spoken about? What had Merryn told him of their marriage that made him write such a thing? Give such a book?
A more fitting choice might be Jude the Obscure in which the characters trade spouses, embark in bigamy, and generally chase down happiness with anyone who fills the hole in their hearts.
Love stories seldom end happily in real life.
Either they fail over time, or like his parents, life fails the lovers.
Their love never diminished, but Mum’s body did. Her mind.
That. That was the parallel to this love story.
Not the strong, resilient Bathsheba and her shepherd who eventually won her heart, but his parents, whose circumstances had completely changed the shape of their love.
And he, like his father, was doomed to love a woman who didn’t remember him sufficiently to return his affection.
But…what did she tell the man?
The knock comes again. “Hello? Open up!”
He blinks. Closes the book and attempts to reorient himself. “Nigel?”
“In the flesh.” The door bangs open and Nigel Brooks bursts in. “You haven’t rung in days.”
“Life has been—”
“You disappeared.” He props a chair backward and sits, leaning over its back.
“I’ve been occupied.”
“Pray, do tell. What’s come of everything?”
He sighs. “One giant mess, that’s what. I’m plucking flower petals—she loves me, she loves me not—with an endless supply.” He tells his friend about the newest challenge—Rupert Covington the Newlyn artist, and the second accident he didn’t know about.
“She married someone?”
“It would seem that way. When you found her in Cheltenham last year, did she tell you anything about her accident? How long she’d been there?”
“Not a word. I barely spoke to her. I was so spitting mad, thinking she put on a show to slip away.”
AJ rakes his hair back with both hands. “I have to get her back. I have to.” He looks into the face of the friend who’s known him the longest and sees trouble there. “What is it?”
“I can’t let you do that, Ansel. I’ve watched you climb too high, then fall too far.” He crosses his arms and leans forward in the chair. “It’ll break you when she does it again.”
“I can’t simply walk away from her, Nigel. I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because she’s my wife. I vowed to her—committed and promised her—”
“Not her, AJ. Someone else. You promised some other Merryn who no longer exists. She doesn’t even remember you now. Till death do you part—there has been a death, AJ. In every way that matters.”
“No. She’s still in there, Nigel.” The fire is hot. Why did he light a fire? “She’s still the same impetuous, spirited, song-filled woman who danced about my kitchen—”
“And what of her vows? If they’re so binding, why did she go and marry another man?”
“My vows are not dependent on anything she does, Nigel. They’re made on my word alone. I have to find her.” AJ stands, but Nigel’s firm grip pulls him down again.
“I believe you’re overlooking one very important fact, my friend.” He waits until AJ meets his gaze. “While you’ve busied yourself chasing her, all these months of planning and wooing, what is she chasing? Not you. She’s been after something else—someone else—since she’s returned to Cornwall.”
“I promised to love her forever. No end date.”
“Of course you have. But, Ansel, what if loving her means letting her go?”
Letting. Her. Go.
Three clear slashes through his soul.
“You cannot force her to love you, mate. And I’ve yet to see her chasing you at all.”
Head in his hands, AJ sinks down and feels his heart pound against the table. “What if she’s hurt, though? She’s alone somewhere. I should—”
“She’s perfectly well, holed up at the flat in Gloucester. I saw her myself.”
“You what?”
“I didn’t tell her much, don’t worry. But I’m also wondering…why haven’t you? Told her anything, that is? It’s clear there’s a great deal she still doesn’t remember.”
“You should have seen her back in Cheltenham. She was so…skittish. Jumpy. Any mention of the past, and she backpedaled immediately.”
“And in all the time you’ve been traveling together through Cornwall, you couldn’t find a spare moment to tell her that she has a past and you know what it is? That you are already her husband?”
“We had a plan.”
“And who is we?”
“Myself and Lady St. Laurent—her late employer. She told me about this specialist out Oxford way, and I saw him, too. He told me that her memories…well, they’re up there somewhere, only her brain doesn’t know how to access them.
Something closed off the path. Her mind seems to be protecting her from what she doesn’t want to know. What she cannot handle.”
“Which is why you haven’t told her the rest yet.”
“She’s endured a lot. Imagine waking up one day with everything erased. Every blessed thing you knew.”
“Sounds like me before I’ve gotten out of bed.”
“Yes, well, that’s her all day and all night long, too. For years. She had to live that way, and she became fragile. Brittle. Any tiny upset might have broken her, so I had to be careful, allow her to rediscover the memories for herself, one by one. To remember me—remember us.”
“And you thought you’d do that while married to her. Again.”
“How else was I supposed to protect her? She was about to lose everything—her home, her position, her connections. I’d been racking my brain to invent some solution, then she handed it to me herself. The marriage was her idea. I merely took her up on it.”
“Because you were hopeful. Like a pathetic puppy, you were hopeful it meant she was actually in love with you again.”
“Is that so terrible?” He bangs his palm on the table, rattling the cups.
Nigel shrinks back. “No, I suppose not.”
Life seldom goes to plan. Marriage will eventually prove to be inconvenient in some seasons, or even downright painful for a time. But love has slipped through the cracks anyway, because it’s the authentic sort which is impossible to truly repress, even if one wishes to.
AJ sighs. “I’m sorry, old mate. These have been long days.”
“They’ve been long years. This has broken you, AJ. Which is why it’s time to walk away. You cannot change the chapters already written, but it’s up to you how you write the new ones. Don’t let this continue. Especially for the sake of a woman who loves someone else.”
“How can you possibly know she loves him?”
He drums his fingers on the table, then he leaves the cottage and returns again, bearing a paper-wrapped package. “I happened upon this when I came into town. Thought it looked remarkably like your wife, and lo and behold, it says Merryn right on it. So I purchased it.”
AJ tears off the paper and stares into the face of his wife.
His stunning wife with creamy skin set against jet-black hair, rosy lips, and those bewitching violet eyes.
The unmistakable mark sits on her jaw, just below her lip.
He forgot how much Merryn wore her personality upon her face.
He captured all of it impeccably, that artist. That Rupert Covington.
There was no doubt in my mind that the man who painted her was deeply in love with his wife.
He truly did see her with remarkable clarity—with eyes of devotion.
Does she return those feelings? Oh how she clung to that man at the lodge in Newlyn, and there was something of the old Merryn in her that night.
She was strong and confident, grounded and sure, all while standing beside that man…
and looking upon AJ with distrust. She fled them both, but perhaps because she could not be with the one she wanted most.
Reality socked him in the gut. I am standing between them.
And that’s when Nigel Brooks begins to sound very logical and intelligent. Very…right. “Nigel, I need to vanish for a time. Don’t search for me.”
“AJ.”
“It’s necessary.”
“AJ, your businesses.”
“Are no longer mine. There’s a reason I sold them to you, Nigel.
Enjoy them—run them well. You don’t need me yelling corrections at you.
You’re wise enough to helm the ship.” He heaves a sigh.
“Thank you, old friend.” AJ stares at the painting, drinking up the sight of Merryn as if for the final time, then he kisses that little mark upon her jaw. He cannot help himself.
Warm tears thicken on his eyes, but he blinks them away and pushes back and grabs the painting. He places it on the mantel above the fireplace, banks the fire, turns, and leaves Dunn Cottage for good.