Chapter 45
It’s just as robust and vivid on the second visit, my Cornwall.
The moist sea air carries salt and voices and the cry of gulls, pulling at me.
Pulling me toward the bright-blue water.
I’ve taken the train all the way this time, since I have precious cargo with me—the sort with very short, very tired legs.
We took the sleeper, with a changeover at St. Erth, but Cecil woke early and planted his face on the window, eager to see it all.
I lead him by the hand onto the platform and through the cobbled town, and he exclaims over every lovely thing along the shore.
My heart thrills as I introduce two of my deepest loves to one another.
At last I lead us along the winding coastal road, up and down the cliffs along the edge of the earth.
I cannot remember how to reach Dunn Cottage from this route, so we happily become lost on the footpath.
“So did you find it?” he asks.
“Find what?”
“You went out looking for something. You said it in your letter.”
“Right. I did, didn’t I?”
“So did you find it?”
I pause on the rocky outcropping that looks over the endless Atlantic. Restlessness still tugs at my soul. “I think I’m still looking.”
We happily scale the cliffs and boulders, enjoying the misty rain that starts and stops into the afternoon.
Then around five, we crest a ridge and I see a familiar figure on the distant headland.
AJ is braced against the wind with sleeves rolled above his elbows, hands thrust in his pockets, breeze ruffling his shirt, blowing the material flat against his body.
He’s staring so intently at the waves, so unmoving.
He isn’t himself—something has come over him, like a trance.
What is he staring at?
I lift my hand to place it on Cecil’s head—I delight in doing that often—but he’s not there. I turn, wind whipping my hair over my face. “Cec?”
Then his voice, a short distance away. “Look, it’s AJ!” I cannot see him over the uneven coastline, and AJ hasn’t noticed him yet, still mesmerized by something on the water. Rocks skitter and tumble down the cliff face somewhere.
No. No, no, no!
I scramble toward the next ridge and cry out, but the wind carries my voice away.
His voice sounds from somewhere on the other side of the boulders.
He’s farther away now. “Merryn!” Then it ignites again—that visceral tightening like a spring that catapults me full force toward his voice.
The taste of panic mingles with salt air, needling its way into my brain and loosening jammed memories… releasing them.
They pour out like an assault, filling those cracks, forming the right picture. Finally, I see the piece I’ve been missing in stark clarity.
No. Oh, heavens. My legs buckle and I hit the grass on my knees. Of course!
It comes in quick blinks—the carriage, the horses, the wind slapping our faces. The path—this very one—it’s steep and rocky. I know the way, though. I know the way.
Please, Aunty Mer. Let me drive, won’t you? No one ever thinks I can do anything.
Because you’re only a boy.
AJ had warned me, had firmly said the boy could not drive.
But AJ wasn’t there just then, and I promised the boy a grand time.
How he deserved it. We snuck out and rode away, taking every coastal path as recklessly as a local, because I was one.
Or had been once. AJ doesn’t know these roads. Can’t tell me what to do.
“Drive, William Thatcher.” I hand the reins over to the boy and whoop and holler as we tear down the road, whipping around curves, flying down hills.
Fast. Too fast.
But the wind. The speed. It’s alluring. A rush of senses.
The boy feels it too. Head back, freckled face to the wind…
I stumble onto a boulder as images pummel me like waves.
The carriage.
A jolt.
We hit a rock.
Another whoop, and the boy slaps the reins across the horses’ backs and they bolt, down the hill and around a tight curve.
There’s a loosening sense of control. The carriage tips onto two wheels.
“No!” I scream, grabbing the reins, but the vehicle lurches. The weight’s tossing us toward the empty air below, then back again. “Stop! William, Stop!”
But on the next curve the weight wins out. Tipping sideways, cresting the cliff and pitching down, the carriage tumbles side over side, then we’re falling. Falling, for what seems forever. Every important thought shudders through my mind. Quick jolts of knowing.
How we were meant to care for the boy. A holiday to Cornwall. The look of trust as we’d climbed into the carriage this morning, and the wide, brilliant grin of a boy who’d been handed the reins by the only adult who’d ever been fun.
I failed him. I’d meant to give him a better life, and now he is going to die. We both are. This is how my days will end…and his short life. Wind whistles through the open window, pressure against my ears. Then the door bangs open and the carriage releases us.
He screams. I lunge for him in midair. Where is he? I paw at the air, propelling myself toward him as we fall. I feel it to my bones, this urgency to reach out and grab him. Save him. Spring out farther, reach out harder. Shield him from the rocks.
Grab him. Save him.
William!
“Cecil!”
I lunge and tackle Cecil, rolling us both over grassy ground, away from the cliff’s edge. I’m poised over him on all fours, heart pounding so that white edges my vision but I see his face. He’s pale and terrified and staring up at me as if I’m crazy.
Perhaps I am.
I look up just as AJ turns, catching sight of us in the grass.
It was here. This headland, these jagged rocks. The carriage pitching, passengers falling…
This is where the accident happened.
I stand, pulling Cecil up, but he says nothing.
Or perhaps I don’t hear it. I’m drinking in the sight of his dear precious face, whole and healthy, and the sight of the man who stood accused of killing me.
The one who’d warned me, attempted to protect me, then lived with the consequences of what I’d foolishly done.
Who then pursued me relentlessly while I was yet blind, and in spite of me.
In spite of my foolish, reckless, wildly impetuous nature that had stolen the life of his nephew years ago.
His beloved nephew William, who had been in such desperate need of mothering.
But instead he’d been cursed with me.
I am a wretch. Selfish. Hotheaded. Now broken beyond repair by what I’ve done and almost forgotten. A new vase with no cracks…or one whose cracks who are only now coming to light. How can he love me? How can he so ardently love someone who has taken something so dear from him?
This…this is the memory that has clogged the road from my heart to my brain, the one from which my mind has tried desperately to protect me. But truth works its way to the surface, hard, splintered reality that cuts whoever grabs it.
AJ grabbed it. Embraced it—embraced me.
And now, here we are again, returned to the very edge of the world where I once pitched over and was lost to him.
Now the scales are falling from my eyes. I see clearly. He isn’t the one who lost me, but the one who came and found me, sweeping me up and loving all the broken pieces of me, holding me gently together while the shattered pieces mended.
No one can make you do anything, Merryn Winthrop.
He waited for me to remember everything. To love him again, however my brain and heart saw fit. To come around to being any sort of wife while he went about throwing everything he had into being my husband. The one I’d had before…but more—the one I’d longed for.
Waste time on me, AJ. Let’s have adventures. Be poor. Travel the world and just be together.
Sometimes we miss love because we don’t recognize it in its purest form. We’re too busy searching for what we believe it is.
I close my eyes and see the man on the beach, watching me with such affection.
That image splits into two—Rupert and AJ, one with the admiring look of an artist, the other with the longing, tender look of a husband—then they slide back into one and it’s AJ, brimming with life and enthusiasm and the deepest, most ardent love I’ve ever witnessed.
He’s standing on that shore, my shore in Cornwall, loving me wholly and completely.
Whether or not I return his affection, it’s cast my way freely, offered and waiting for me to accept it… or walk away.
Love is invaluable because of what it has cost someone.
Cecil has moved toward AJ, and AJ kneels with open arms to sweep him up, holding him close. Oh, how I long to be swept up again. Nothing compares to this man’s embrace.
I don’t deserve it, though.
It wasn’t AJ I sought rescue from when I’d landed in Rupert’s arms. It was myself, and all that AJ reminded me of.
He rises, anchoring Cecil to his side and looking me over, emotion flickering over his haggard face. “No Rupert Covington,” he says, his gaze questioning.
I shake my head. “I couldn’t.” I sweep my blowing hair off my face. “I never married him in the first place. That day, I remembered something important and ran away. I took the train…to Gloucester.” Tears cloud my vision of AJ’s face. You are my forever.
Oh, how his face brightens. “Did you, indeed?”
I grieve the idea of my perfect self, the one who had any reason to reject this man. But mostly…I grieve for William. For the loss of his life. I can never repair what I’ve broken. I stare out over the cliff, down to the water as tears thicken. “How can you stand me?”
He stands alert and almost…hopeful. “You remember.”
“A bit.” The tears fall. “I’m broken, Ansel.”
His expression collapses. “As am I.”
He doesn’t tell me it’ll be all right. Or that it wasn’t my fault. Because it was. He only closes the distance between us in four long strides and wraps me in his arms. Second chances are not earned…they’re granted.
This is love. A relentless, intentional pursuit. The restraint to wait for permission, and the loyalty to never give up. A laying down of one’s own life and desires for the sake of another.
Then he slides his hands up my arms and brushes his lips along my cheek, silently asking for permission, allowing me to stop him.
I lean in, and he folds me close and kisses me with dizzying sweetness, the nectar of honest affection on his lips.
Then he tucks me firmly in the space I fit so perfectly—the space I’ve always belonged.
“What if I strike my head another time?” It has been reinjured once already, with a greater loss of memory, just as the doctor warned. “What if I forget all over again?”
“It's likely.”
“And then what?”
He tips my head back, his hands framing my face as the wind whips tendrils across it.
“I suppose loving you is one of those things. It’s part of me, because I keep doing it.
I shall go on doing it, even on the days you don’t want me to.
And this time we shall write down every little thing in that notebook of yours so that if you do forget… I’ll have proof of what we had.”
I laugh and touch my forehead to his. “Oh Ansel. If I manage to pursue you even half as hard as you have me…we’ll be all right.”
His smile is exuberant. “Better than all right.” His lips are on mine before the words are even finished. He holds me close and pours out years of pent-up love in a string of eager kisses. He’s lavishing it on me, blessing me with it…taking every drop I give him.
“Ew!”
I startle at Cecil’s voice, then I laugh.
He wrinkles his nose. “I’ll just go and stand over here.”
AJ laughs and grabs him in a bear hug and we fall into each other’s arms in a pile of found family on the grass.
“Now, Mrs. Winthrop.” AJ’s smile is brilliant as he rolls over and touches my chin. “About those adventures you wanted…”