His smile is exuberant. “Better than all right.” His lips are on mine before the words are even finished. He holds me close and pours out years of pent-up love in a string of eager kisses. He’s lavishing it on me, blessing me with it…taking every drop I give him.
“Ew!”
I startle at Cecil’s voice, then I laugh.
He wrinkles his nose. “I’ll just go and stand over here.”
AJ laughs and grabs him in a bear hug and we fall into each other’s arms in a pile of found family on the grass.
“Now, Mrs. Winthrop.” AJ’s smile is brilliant as he rolls over and touches my chin. “About those adventures you wanted…”
Chapter 46
William, 1947
“Sowhatbecameofthat 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.
Ephemeralityit 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.”
