Chapter 42
“Marriage is a series of sacrifices, isn’t it?” The story sinks into William’s soul, especially told in Merryn’s soft voice. “You have to be willing, over and over.”
She laughs good-naturedly, rocking back on the bench.
“I suppose that’s one way to see it. How very unpleasant that sounds.
I prefer to call marriage a dance, with complex steps you learn together by watching your partner.
Come, let me show you.” She rises, her lovely tulle wrapper floating about her as she holds out her arms. “Dance with me.”
He springs up and takes her hand, and she moves them easily into a dance. Step and retreat, pivot and twirl. He bumbles it, badly. Knee into her leg. Foot on her toes. Nearly dropping her on the spin. “I’m afraid I cannot keep up.”
She taps the underside of his bearded chin with her knuckles. “Never look at the feet. Always look at her face, and you’ll be able to sense what she’s about to do. What she needs you to do.”
William forces his gaze to Merryn’s face and marvels again that his painting has come to life.
She’s lovely, and there’s something faintly familiar about her, about her smooth, rich nature that reminds him of polished mahogany.
The peace on her worn face is expansive and deep, her smile warm, as if her soul has grown roots and sunk far into the ground, and once anchored, she’s pulled light up from it.
“Now tell me about yours. I heard you married a lovely girl from—” Her expression falls.
“Oh…Oh no, what is it? Has something happened?”
William turns and moves to the bench so she cannot read his face so clearly. People who’ve found peace enough to stop analyzing themselves have the uncanny ability to see into others with alarming clarity.
She sits beside him and tilts her head a bit. “Do you miss her, Will?”
He breathes in, recalling the scent of Helen, the sound of her voice that has been so clear even through the crackling telephone connection. How warm and welcoming she is—how wide and lovely her smile, especially when directed his way. “Yes.” He stares at his hands.
She wants to ask more—he can see it on her face—but she doesn’t.
“W-w-what’s it like? Losing your memory, that is?”
She squints, gazing into the distance. “Like being a newborn babe.”
“A blank slate, with nothing to mar it.”
She leans down to pluck a weed and toss it aside. “We think of memories as a logbook, but they’re more than that. They give us a framework through which to view our present. Not having that is freeing at times. I wasn’t wary or jaded, and I delighted in life as a child does, trusted everyone.”
“That sounds…perfect.” He closes his eyes, but he’s immediately assaulted with images of flying bodies against a night sky, so he opens them again. Memories are involuntary. And the ones a person most wishes to remove…those hold faster than anything.
“But it also left me without discernment, and often without compassion. I was immature as a child is, and feeling my way in the dark which, it turns out, I was afraid of. But then I realized it wasn’t the dark I feared, but being alone in it.
So I looked to people to ground me in the world.
What they said about me, how they interacted with each other…
that became my encyclopedia of life, and I let them constantly reorient me.
But people aren’t meant to be anchors, even if they offer to be. ”
He did that. His Helen anchored him, and he knew his place in the world when he was beside her. That was good. “Your marriages, you mean. You wanted an anchor.”
“Indeed.” A quiet blush swept up her cheeks. “You’ve read everything then, have you?”
“I couldn’t look away.”
She stares over William’s shoulder. “You’ve lived in Cornwall for some time, yes? Since you’ve…gone missing?”
A nod.
“Can you imagine if Dunn Cottage had been built down on those beaches? The loose pebbles and sand.”
“No, ma’am.”
“Dunn Cottage is a singular and remarkable place with an incredible history. It has withstood hundreds of years and thousands of love stories, and there’s exactly one reason why.
” She takes one large hand in both of hers.
“Let me tell you, Will. Never build your house on sand when rock is available to you. Never build it on anything that can move. Because eventually, it will—including people. Or…your memories.”
William stares down at their hands, hers on top of his. What is she telling him? Has he been brought to this wretched place in his life because of some failure—some wrongheaded building upon sand? Perhaps it’s true. He has done many foolish things. But what is the sand in his life?
And more importantly…what is the rock?
“I don’t wish to build anything upon my memories,” he says.
They are a swamp that will suck down anything standing upon it.
He’s already up to his neck most days, working hard just to keep his head out of it.
Then he thinks of Helen and feels the muck and mire roll off his soul. “Except…except maybe the good ones.”
She smiles. “Tell me about your Helen.”
The ache deepens…but something loosens around his chest as he speaks of her.
He tells the woman from the painting everything that comes to mind about the one who holds his heart, and the words flow faster and faster, the memories tripping over one another.
He paints such a picture of her that Merryn will recognize his Helen if she walks through the door.
She smiles through his rambling. “You know, most people write their bad memories in stone and their good ones in the sand. You have done the opposite.”
An unexpected lurch occurs in his stomach. “N-n-not with all of them.” His heart pounds. It feels like a throbbing in his neck. If only she knew what his mind stored, carved in stone. She’s looking at him, waiting for more, so he adds, “Some bad memories refuse to fade away.”
A glimmer of a smile. “A funny thing about memories. The only sure way to hang on to them is to try and be rid of them. Isn’t that right?”
He nods.
“Those bad memories, Will.” She takes his hand, looking up into his face.
“They’re worth something, too. More than you think.
They complete the picture.” She taps the ornate garden mosaic, a collection of rock fragments and glass shards, beneath their feet.
“They are rather lovely to look at. Not alone, perhaps, but…they complete the picture, yes?”
He swallows. The thumping intensifies. Is she going to make him tell it? To speak of what he’s seen? He closes his eyes for the flicker of a moment, and he smells the swamp. The dynamite. Exactly nothing about that is beautiful.
“I’ll ask you one more time, Will.” Her voice is gentle. “What happened between you and Helen?”
He inflates his chest with air. Thoughts rush through his mind, a million fragments and words shooting around, but when he opens his mouth none of them come out. Pain eclipses logic. Drowns him.
I broke it.
The marriage. Those men on the bridge.
Himself.
He digs in his satchel and draws out an item wrapped up in brown paper. “I keep this wrapped up because…well, broken shards can cut a person.” His chest aches as he hands her the truth of his soul. Will she take his meaning? “It came from Dunn Cottage.”
She pulls the wrapped shards onto her lap. “Do you know what this was?” She gives a faint smile. “I used it as a child to fetch water back to the house.” She touches the fragments, turning them over. “The memories are precious. And the vase was quite useful to me.”
William stares at a tuft of grass growing between the stones of her path. He doesn’t need a lecture. That’s what she’s after, isn’t it? He hasn’t any idea what she’s trying to tell him, and he wishes she’d stop.
She walks across the garden and retrieves a large blue vase, bringing it back to show him. “This is the one I use now. Lovely, isn’t it? A bit larger, but not without its flaws. See, how the ridges are uneven? I made it myself.”
His mind races. What’s she saying? Never before has he felt so dull-witted. His flaws run far deeper than uneven ridges. He’s broken.
“You’re avoiding her, aren’t you? Keeping yourself away from her.”
“Sometimes that is the loving thing.” He casts a glance at the broken vase.
She places a hand on his chest. He flinches—touch has become so rare. “What is it costing you in here? More so, what do you imagine it’s costing her?” She tips her head. “What good do you suppose it’s doing?”
White edges his vision, and sweat cools his skin. “It’s not that simple.” Panic flits over him. He cannot say why. He wanted her to understand, to see his point and lay off him, but instead she’s pushing harder, poking into raw wounds.
“Let me tell you.” She touches his face as a mother would, but her expression is stern. “Grousing about this way is self-indulgent, William. Prove to me it isn’t.”
He smears his sleeve across his moist forehead.
“Your sadness isn’t the issue. You’re entitled to that, by all that is holy. You’ve been through war. It’s what you’re choosing to do with your brokenness that’s costing you—and her—everything.”
He needs to run, and his muscles are twitching.
But her gaze is relentless. She will not let him evade her.
“The truth is hard with sharp edges on it. But sometimes only a cut will truly heal.” She moves closer to him on the bench.
As his heart pounds, he squelches the urge to move away.
“She deserves better from you, Will. Give of yourself. Allow her to know you. Give her the chance to embrace you as you are now.”
How had Lieutenant Carmichael said it? She won’t have me.
Doesn’t she see that? Does he have to say the wretched words aloud? To tell her of Peter, his lost son, and the spent funds and all his impetuous, wrongheaded decisions?
The world narrows. A tight space without an exit. He’s shaking, shaking. “Don’t speak of what you cannot understand.” He doesn’t wish to tell her the whole story. He cannot.
“You’ve been focused on simply surviving for plenty long. It’s time to get on with living. What happened is past and—”
“I won’t simply move on from it. I cannot!
” He jerks away, and then there’s a crash—he’s knocked something over.
He cannot see what, as he sees only white.
Images assault him. Men flying in the night.
Wood splintering. Fire and terror and everything humanity can do to each other.
“Moving past something like that would be inhuman!”
He blinks. Clears his vision. It’s her vase he’s broken. The large, lovely blue vase she uses for water. She should be angry with him, just like Florence should have been.
Why is she staring at him? He’s a bull and the world is a china shop. He grabs the wrapped painting, glances toward the open side gate, and takes off running.