Chapter 46
“So what became of that broken woman?” William asks.
A crooked smile. “She married a broken man.” She waves her hand toward the open window, through which they can see the two men discussing a tall rosebush. “Ansel James Winthrop married me twice. He helped me piece together my past and to build new memories. And now…now I am doing the same for him.”
“He’s lost his memory?”
“Losing. It’s a gradual process.” Her smile is wistful. “His mother had the same condition, only her disease made her angry. Ansel is just…soft. Affectionate. A bit needy.” She laughs. “But that’s all right with me.”
“You’ve had to sacrifice a great deal.”
“So has he. Love never exists without sacrifice.”
Merryn’s husband steps back through the door, eyeing William and Merryn. He’s clearly overheard everything. Before he hobbles from the room, he scribbles on a slip of paper and drops it on the table, then kneels down to receive an emphatic kiss on the cheek from Merryn.
Ephemerality it says. Ephemeral trivial memories that bring clarity.
She laughs, her lips wide. “He probably cannot tell you my name right off, but he knows large, ridiculous words. And that he gets a kiss every time he drops a word in my word jar.”
Age has a way of filtering out the important facts to make room for the valuable ones.
The man likely recalls everything he needs to, just as William himself knows, after years spent with Helen, what’s truest about his marriage.
Perhaps he was right, recording the good memories in stone and the bad ones in sand.
Merryn rises to place the slip of paper in her jar, cheeks pink as she shakes her head. “Honestly. The man is incorrigible.”
William smiles. Love is…two broken people who find one another and somehow embrace the broken pieces.
“Now let’s have a look at that painting of yours.”
He blinks, staring down at it. He’d almost forgotten. He sets it up on the table and peels the paper off, and she stands back, hand to her mouth, as her own face is revealed in a gilded frame. She gasps, and her eyes go wide. “I thought these were all burned.”
“So it is his?”
She nods. “He burned the lot of them years ago. But this…this is the one he painted when I found him again in Newlyn, that day we spent together on the rise. Nigel Brooks purchased it and brought it to Dunn Cottage.”
“What’s become of Covington?”
She sighs, closing her eyes. “He married another artist named Laura. They were always quite close. They’ve lived out of the public eye since eloping, and I imagine they’re quite happy together.”
He stares again at the cracked vases—one tall, one smaller. New life.
William processes the story, start to finish, and it aligns eerily well with his own family history.
Pieces meld together to form the correct picture.
His grandmother had Alzheimer’s. He lost his mum as a lad, too.
Which means…“I was the boy. The one in your accident. Little William, the motherless nephew who wanted to drive the carriage.”
“Yes, that was you.” She shifts her gaze to him and tears well in her eyes. “I was an impetuous, whimsical fool. Still am at times, but that accident changed me.”
“But…I didn’t die. I’m here.”
Her eyes slide closed. “’Tis a blessed miracle, that. I cried for days when AJ told me.”
“Why don’t I remember it?”
“You were young. Just a lad.” She trembles.
“We were meant to protect you, to offer you a refuge. You’d just lost your mother, and your father worked every waking moment in the city.
When we offered to take you for the summer, your father was relieved.
But after the accident”—she blinks back tears—“he hated us. Cursed us and cut us off. You were all he had left and we sent you home broken. Nearly killed you.”
William runs a hand up his left thigh still pulsing with residual ache.
“My leg. It came from that.” His gait has been uneven for as long as he can remember.
After his father died, William had no one to answer his questions, so he just accepted his lot.
“So that accident, the one they blamed on AJ Winthrop…it was you and me in that carriage?”
She nods. “People assumed AJ rigged the carriage to lose control like that. Besides, AJ and I had been arguing the night before, I’m told. AJ had a terrible habit of knowing what was best for me and unfortunately so did I. So that morning, you and I snuck out for a bit of fun.”
“And I sent us over the cliffs.”
“No! You were a child, William. No more than five years of age, and I was the adult who should have acted as one. Instead I gave in to my wild impulses, as I often do—such as marrying the man who’s in front of me.
Or taking the clifftop roads at blinding speed, then handing the reins to a young boy. ”
William lays a hand on her shaking one. “Or diving in front of a Packard to save a stranger.”
Her eyes close and she squeezes his fingers.
“Saving Cecil…that was my heart’s way of saving you, I believe.
An urgency burned inside me when we went over those cliffs…
keep reaching. Keep leaping. Keep grabbing for you.
And it kept on urging until I grabbed another little boy—a stranger—and pulled him to safety as I longed to do for you. ” Her shoulders shake.
She’s still broken, still cracked—not holding water anymore…but showcasing flowers. There’s an elegant peace about her, even as she grieves her past mistakes. How did you heal? he wants to ask, but it feels invasive.
She takes his hand in both of hers, inspecting the nails and the knuckles. They are dirty and calloused, yet she studies them as something precious. “Will you do something for me, William Thatcher?”
“Of course. Anything.”
“Don’t settle, lad.”
“On what?”
“On half the truth. On avoiding difficult matters because you think they might hurt.”
William licks his lips. “I know they will. And n-n-not just me.” A shiver. It isn’t hurting anything for him to stay in Cornwall. Not truly.
She places her slender hand over his calloused one. “Please, Will. Please don’t deny me the pleasure of helping the one I broke so long ago find healing.”
When Merryn bids him goodbye, she kisses him on each cheek, lets him know he’s welcome to return, and tucks the Hardy book into his hands.