Epilogue
One Year Later—Present Day, England
Bree Donnelly had worn waterproof mascara to her own wedding and only cried through half the ceremony, which, considering she’d married a man she’d known for eight days, seemed like tremendous personal growth.
She hadn’t worn waterproof mascara to the chapel tour which had been rather poor planning on her part.
Amelia would have stood beside her in perfect shoes, purse organized like a miniature command center, and said, Bree, emotional preparedness is not the same thing as pessimism, while producing tissues, lip balm, blister patches, painkillers, three safety pins, a portable charger, and probably a granola bar from a bag no larger than a paperback.
Bree had once accused her cousin of being part human, part emergency kit.
Now she stood in a thirteenth-century chapel with rain streaking down the narrow windows, a handful of tissues dissolving in her fist, and wished for one more practical scolding so fiercely it hurt.
“She would’ve hated these stairs,” Bree said, her voice wobbling.
Beside her, Linda Quinn looked down at the worn stone floor and let out a small, breathy laugh. “My darling daughter would’ve made a note in the online review.”
“Three stars. Historically significant, but railings inadequate.”
“Two stars,” Linda said. “No accessible restroom.”
“And the gift shop shortbread is dry.”
Linda turned to her. “You bought two boxes.”
“I was grieving and under-caffeinated. Those are mitigating circumstances.”
Linda’s mouth tilted up.
For half a second, Bree almost smiled back. Then grief, that absolute drama queen, flung itself across the furniture again.
The chapel was small and cold, tucked behind the ruins of Ashcombe Castle like a secret the centuries had forgotten.
It smelled of damp stone, old wood, beeswax polish, and rain carried in on tourists’ coats.
A single electric heater hummed near the entrance, losing its battle against seven hundred years of English chill.
Beyond the chapel door, a guide in a navy raincoat was explaining medieval land tenure to a couple who clearly regretted not booking the distillery tour.
Ashcombe was smaller than Bree remembered from her wedding weekend and somehow larger too, as if absence had made the stones lean closer.
The marquee lawn was empty now. Wet grass.
A low rope. A sign asking visitors not to climb on the walls.
The tower still stood roofless against the grey sky, moss furred along its edges, rain turning the stone dark.
A rope blocked the doorway, along with a polite sign stating that visitors entered at their own risk.
Gaz had entered anyway. Her husband’s best friend, who had been drunk and awful and apparently the last person to annoy Amelia before she disappeared, had decided guilt made him useful.
Unfortunately, guilt had not made him quieter. He’d arrived that morning wearing a cream cashmere jumper, sunglasses despite the rain, and the haunted expression of a man who had been recognized by three pensioners and one ten-year-old boy in the parking lot.
“I just want to help,” he’d told Bree for the seventh time, while peering behind a gift shop display of local honey. “Could be something everyone missed.”
“It’s been a year, Gaz.”
“Police miss things.”
“You once lost your car in your own driveway.”
“It was a very large driveway.”
Deck had put one steady hand on Gaz’s shoulder and steered him toward the tower before Bree could answer with something Amelia would have described as unproductive, legally risky, and possibly satisfying.
A year ago, Bree had married Deck beneath fairy lights, and sometime between champagne and dinner, Amelia had vanished.
People still said vanished as if the word were tidy.
Nothing about it had been tidy. Searchlights had cut across the wet grass.
Police had taped off the tower. Her passport had still been in her room at the inn.
Her overnight bag sat neatly on the luggage rack, because Amelia would have rather faked her own death than leave clothes strewn about.
Her tiny satin purse and phone had been found inside the ruined tower, tucked beside the old window ledge where the ancient sword had rested.
Except the sword wasn’t there anymore either.
That was one of those details people mentioned once and then quietly stopped mentioning, because it made the whole thing feel too much like a ghost story told after two glasses of sherry.
The old Ashcombe sword, the antique treasure the guides loved to point out and the wedding photographer had wanted to use as moody medieval atmosphere, had vanished along with Amelia.
Her phone had been dead from rain and time. Her lipstick had still been there. Tissues. Safety pins. A tiny sewing kit. A hotel key card. A receipt for champagne she hadn’t wanted and had bought anyway because Bree had said it was festive.
No blood or torn dress. No beautiful blue heels, which Bree considered personally offensive, because if there was one thing Amelia would not do, even in a crisis, was abandon designer shoes without a formal process.
For months, there had been nothing. No bank activity. No passport use. No hospital records. And no body. No trace of Amelia after that storm-soaked Saturday at Ashcombe Castle.
Deck had canceled their honeymoon before Bree had even thought to ask. He’d stood in the vestibule of the inn with his phone in one hand, his wedding ring still shining on his finger, his face pale and hard in that way men got when they were trying very badly not to fall apart.
Bree would remember her wedding forever as the happiest and saddest day of her life.
Happy because she had married Deck, the ridiculous, steady, broad-shouldered love of her life.
Devastating because Amelia, who was not only her cousin but the sister life had forgotten to give her, had disappeared between champagne and dinner.
Some days Bree could almost convince herself Amelia had stepped into a fairy ring near the ruined tower.
It was stupid. Childish. A thought Amelia would have dismantled with a spreadsheet, three sources, and one arched brow over the top of her sunglasses.
But deep down, in the little locked room of Bree’s heart where logic had been asked to remove its shoes and wait outside, she believed it.
Amelia had stepped into a fairy ring. Or through a storm. Or into whatever old, strange door lived in ruined towers near ancient swords. And now she was happy somewhere with a hot fairy prince who wore armor and looked excellent brooding beside the battlements.
Because the alternatives were too awful to think about. And because if anyone could fall into an ancient legend and immediately improve the household management, water supply, and emotional literacy of the local male population, it was Amelia.
Then Linda found the blog post. Not on a reputable academic site, because apparently the universe had a flair for chaos, but buried in a local history blog with an orange banner, six pop-up ads, and a comments section in which three people argued about whether a nearby priory had ghosts or only bad plumbing.
The post was about the newly restored chapel effigies at Ashcombe.
One image. That was all it took. A stone lady lying beside a stone lord.
Her hands folded in prayer. Her gown falling in carved folds from narrow shoulders.
Her face worn soft by centuries, but enough remained.
A pointed chin. A small mouth tilted as if she were privately amused.
Hair carved loose beneath the veil, spilling in waves over the pillow beneath her head.
And on the inscription, newly cleaned by some cheerful conservation volunteer who had no idea what kind of wrecking ball she had taken to Bree’s life, were the words:
AMELIA, LADY ASHCOMBE
BELOVED WIFE OF THOMAS, LORD ASHCOMBE
Bree and Linda had booked their flights that night.
Now they stood before the effigy. The stone couple lay beneath an arched recess in the north wall.
The lord was broad-shouldered even in death, carved in mail with a sword along one side.
His face hadn’t survived as well as hers, but enough remained to suggest a stern brow, a strong jaw, and very good hair.
Beside him, the lady’s stone hand rested near his. Not touching. Almost.
Linda stepped forward. Amelia’s mother was not a woman who fell apart.
She was compact, with silver-brown hair cut to her chin, a cardigan buttoned wrong because her hands had trembled in the hotel that morning, and sneakers still damp from the walk across the bailey.
She had spent the last year folding grief into tasks.
Calls to detectives, embassies, hospitals.
Calls to Bree when neither of them could sleep and there was nothing new to say, so they said nothing together.
Now she reached out, then stopped before her fingers touched the stone.
Museum rules.
Amelia would have approved.
“She hated being late,” Linda said.
Bree gave a watery laugh.
“She was always ten minutes early,” Linda continued, staring at the carved face. “For school. For work. Even Thanksgiving. She’d stand in my kitchen with the rolls in one hand and a schedule in the other, telling me when the turkey needed to come out.”
“She made me a wedding timeline,” Bree said. “For a wedding I planned in a week.”
“She would.”
“It was color-coded.”
“Of course it was.”
“There should’ve been a lavender tab for emotional emergencies.”
Linda’s mouth trembled, but the tears didn’t fall.
She looked at the inscription again.
“Somehow, she fell through time,” Linda whispered.
Bree turned to her.
Linda pressed one hand to her chest. “I know what it sounds like. I know missing persons cases don’t end with medieval effigies. I know all of that.”
“I know too,” Bree said.
Linda looked at the stone lady.
“But that’s my girl.”
The words opened something in the chapel.
Nothing moved. No choir of angels, no beam of sunlight, because England in November did not have a strong grasp of theatrical timing. But Bree felt it.