“Dinah!” her sister tutted, sending the toast into a chaotic murmur instead of a raising of glasses for a few moments.
“To healing,” Mae said, drawing their attention back. “And to the harm that makes it necessary. May we all love our beautiful scars.”
“Cheers,” said Matthew. “Spoken like a parable.”
“Like a poet,” Ezra commented.
“Like my wife,” Roland decided.
And they all drank to a future where safety from harm is never guaranteed, but willingness to heal would always be theirs for the taking.
EPILOGUE
Two months later
She had chosen Venice.
Of all the memories they had made since the day her feet finally left London soil, between the wedding and the sailing and the arrival on foreign lands, among the exploration and language and foreignness of it all, Mae’s favorite part of the whole of this adventure had become the mornings.
Their little room above the canal had a balcony that faced the sunrise. She always woke in a shaft of warm light, even now with autumn fully upon them.
Some mornings, she’d wake and see Roland by her side, watching her in her slumber, or still in the final pulses of his own.
Others, she’d wake to see nothing but the little golden duckling on his pillow and know that he had gone to retrieve Venetian pastries and coffee to serve to her in their bed. On those mornings, he was never gone for long.
Today she awoke to the duck, its little beak glimmering white in the ray of sun it had caught in its mouth, as though the goldweight, too, anticipated the breakfast to come.
She smiled, pulling it from his pillow and dropping it over her heart as she stretched her limbs and indulged in a final yawn. When she sat up, she deposited it on their bedside table, next to the thimble, which had traveled with them all this way.
Her wedding ring clicked against both.
The key to her medicine cabinet was the only talisman she had left behind, and that only out of necessity.
She had made Ravi promise to have copies made, but only two. One for Ravi himself and another for Dr. Bethel.
She could have one made for Roland, of course, but she did so enjoy when he stole hers. She enjoyed it very much.
“What are you smiling about so early in the day?” came her husband’s voice as the door creaked open, “and without me here to inspire it?”
She looked up at him, haloed in the golden light of sunrise, his hair tied loosely at his nape, his collar open, and his sleeves rolled back to accommodate the tray of food he had brought her as he kicked the door shut behind him.
“Theft,” she said, tilting her head to the side. “I was thinking about getting back to London and how I might stop you from stealing my medicine key once we do. Perhaps I will wear it on a chain around my neck.”
“Nestled between your incredible breasts?” he replied, looking intrigued as he set the tray down at her feet. “That sounds like a challenge, Mrs. Reed.”
“Does it, indeed?” she asked, dimpling at him as she took up the mugs and poured them both a cup of steaming coffee. “I thought perhaps it would sound like a deterrent.”
He grinned at her, sliding onto the bed at her side. “No, you didn’t.”
“No,” she agreed, pinching off a corner of the frittole and popping it in her mouth. “I didn’t.”
He sighed, leaning back against the headboard and turning his face toward the sunrise, watching the water glint on the canal as the gondolamen cleaned and waxed their vessels for the day ahead. “I will miss this,” he said. “I am glad to have seen it, but oddly, I am also anticipating the return to London.”
“London will be new too,” she told him, following his gaze. “Everything will be different when we get back. We will find new rhythms together, discover how the clinic has fared in our absence, decide on all the little things that must change now that we are one thing together instead of two people apart.”
He gave a little chuckle and glanced back at her, his eyes flashing in the light. “Perhaps all those little choices are what I’m so eager to get to. Do you think we’ll return to Winston reciting Greek and Latin and little Lord Cecil fully humbled and perhaps in love with Sally?”
“Oh,” said Mae, her eyes going bleary imagining it. “I do hope so. Sally would eat that boy for breakfast.”
