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 whatseems 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 washere. 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 inspite 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.
