Epilogue
The enchantment of Dunn Cottage wraps around my soul as I enter again, even after so many years. I tug my husband through the doorway, and AJ ducks to enter, but pauses with reverence in the place where we once rediscovered one another.
He loops his thumbs in his suspenders, his voice quiet. “Quite a place, isn’t it?”
I hold my breath, not daring to ask the words I so often think but usually keep to myself—do you remember?
He casts his gaze over the fireplace where he once fried fish for me, the table where he propped my recovered brooch, and the chair where I sat with my injured legs…as his gentle hands cared for the wounds.
Can he feel that touch yet, as I can?
The door opens again, and two of our young grandchildren bound in—Cecil’s precious Marta and Anders, who’ve taken a tour of my old haunts about the shoreline.
“Grandmama! Tell us about the field.” Marta, a delightful girl of six, springs up to me and I’m compelled to sit so she may bound onto my lap.
“What was up on that hill?” She has Cecil’s elfin ears, which delights me to no end.
Even though the children born to us had families as well, these two precious babes of Cecil’s reign over their own corner of my heart.
“Ah! You’ve been to see Dunn House. What’s left of it, that is, after the burning.”
Anders blinks from the shadows—I have his attention as well.
“But this is Dunn House,” she says.
“Actually,” I say, gathering her close, “this is Dunn Cottage, but once the Dunns belonged to a magnificent estate up on the rise called Dunn House. It was well known in these parts, but it was destroyed many years ago, when my mum was a girl.”
“An estate! Oh, how dreadful it’s gone.”
I set the girl on her feet and take her outside by the hand.
Together we climb to the rise, where I stop to catch my breath and stare out over the scorched earth.
“There’s where the front entrance was, and the drive is still there, with the metal gates.
And over there, the chapel.” A few odd headstones stand at angles in the tall grass.
“What happened?” asks Anders, eyes alight at the topic change. “How’d the fire start?”
“Actually, there’s quite a story surrounding it. A love story.”
Anders scrunches his nose. “No one wants to hear about romance.”
“Good, because it isn’t one. Love stories are entirely different. It’s about a young woman who finds a man living beneath a bridge and brings him home for Christmas.”
“That’s not an exciting story,” says Anders.
“Wait until you hear about who he really was.” I raise my eyebrows. “Since you’ve no interest, perhaps we should tell it another time, though.”
“No!” wails Marta, clutching my arm. “I want to hear it, even if Anders is an old stick-in-the-mud.”
But I stand and cross to the kitchen, instinct tugging at me to go. There’s a band between AJ and me, and the distance between us can only stretch out for so long before we’re drawn together again.
Inside, I release the girl’s hand but pause to kiss her cheek.
“It’s rather a long story, love. One best saved for a rainy day when everyone present does wish to hear it.
Dunn Cottage has a fair number of love stories, and I promise to tell them all.
” Including ours. Especially ours. There’s an enchantment to Dunn Cottage I cannot explain.
The door closes behind me. “Why did they build this cottage into the rocks, Gran? Did they mean it to be a cave?”
I laugh. “There are many legends about the old cottage—you’d never believe all the secrets it holds just beyond these old walls.
” I place my hand on the stones, wondering how much I should tell them.
The stories are nuanced and layered, the grit of real life, and not as neat and tidy as the fables to which they’re accustomed.
“Secrets!”
My gaze darts across the room to AJ, who is staring at the painting of me. It’s now leaning against the sideboard tucked into a little alcove. I hold my breath—do you remember? The accident. The lost years. The traipsing through Cornwall to reclaim my memories…and the great love that was reclaimed.
I clear my throat. “What are you thinking?”
He turns, a half smile lighting his gently aging face. “Only how beautiful you are.” He looks from the painting to me, countenance soft with affection again.
“Comes in handy when I burn your toast.”
“You’d never do such a thing.”
I turn toward the stove and throw a teasing smile over my shoulder. “Wouldn’t I?”
He crosses the room and pulls me close, kisses the back of my neck. I turn, and he smooths my hair off my face, looking down intently with an expression that has withstood the ages. “Marry me, Merryn,” he whispers. “What do you say?”
I kiss him soundly, nuzzle his slightly bristled cheek, and whisper, “That’s not a bad scheme, I suppose.
” I inhale deeply and delight in the scent of him.
One silver lining to his slipping memory is that he forgets certain bothersome details, like the fact that we’re already married.
He remembers only that we adore one another, and that we adventure together and laugh a great deal.
He proposes at least once a month, usually posed as a secretive plan to spirit me away. I have yet to reject him.
“You won’t regret it?”
“Only when you burn my toast.”
A sparkle in his eyes, then it dims. “I’ve trouble remembering things at times, luv. Suppose I leave the—”
I kiss away the end of his sentence. “Then let us fill those blanks with new memories, shall we? Lots of them.”
His expression softens into a smile. “They’ll be decent memories, won’t they?”
I tear up at the look of a lost boy on his face. “Brilliant ones.” I kiss him, my lips lingering on his eager ones. I shall never tire of the taste of AJ Winthrop. Then I leave the little alcove and return to the children, who are around the hearth.
“Is the cottage much the way you remember it?” the boy asks, for we’ve not been back in some time.
I glance around at the cottage that has sheltered us all. “Like a warm embrace, holding everything together. Still dim and chilly and secluded…” I look at the words of the ancient melody on the far wall. “And threaded with song. There’s always music about Dunn Cottage.”
“Sing for us, won’t you?” AJ asks.
I could cry. He’s mostly the same, my AJ, but he’s become quieter. Dulled by a heavy weight…which is lifted for the moment in this place.
Those memories are still there. Her mind is merely having trouble retrieving them.
Dr. Bartlett had spoken those words so long ago, about me.
Amnesia is different than AJ’s memory loss, but perhaps not entirely.
Though many details and facts have slipped through the cracks, the important memories still cling somewhere deep within, and at times, they reappear.
Here in the safety of Dunn Cottage, his mind is soft and receptive to the lost moments of his past, just as mine was so many years ago, and the AJ of old has asked me for a song.
So I sing. A Cornish melody that fills the place, then another.
A voice whispers in my ear from behind, “Dance with me, luv?”
“Oh AJ, I haven’t any shoes on. Another time, perhaps.”
“Earth’s crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire.” He kisses my ear. “But only he who sees takes off his shoes.”
I twist in his arms to face him, smiling up at him. “In that case, Mr. Winthrop, you’ll have to lead.”
“I’d be honored.”
I stand in my stockinged feet upon his shoes and let him guide me, waltzing small circles about the room with the man who taught me how to love. His hand is steady at my back. The children’s laughter fades into the walls, into the stone, into the long memory of this place.
Sometimes love is all roses and moonbeams. But other times it is this—choosing again and again what remains, even though so much has slipped away.
“You did not answer,” he whispers, leaning close with his mischievous smile drawing me in. “Shall we be wed?”
I close my eyes and smile, leaning my forehead on his. I think of all the stories that have occurred within these walls. I think of the way memory reshapes itself, sanding sharp edges, breaking others entirely, leaving only fragments behind.
And yet, how strange it is that even broken stories still tell the truth. “Every day, love. I’d marry you every day.”
I hold him as the music fades, as the fire settles into embers, as the cottage gathers us into itself once more.
Some stories are lost to time.
Some are rewritten.
And some—broken, imperfect, and true—continue to echo, even in minds that have forgotten the details.