by Laura Briggs
"Anyway, I hope someone takes him soon. I'm going to grow rather fond of that overgrown mop, and I can't afford to keep him. The cats are eating me out of salary."
"Here's your pint," said Pete to Matt, handing him a glass.
"Thanks, mate."
"Any word from the writer?" Rosie asked. "I haven't seen her in what seems an age. 'Course, heard about what happened out on the water. Sounds like a proper disaster. Dovie says she's losing her favorite guest by default."
"That's what rumors say," I answered. "I haven't seen her since that afternoon, I'm afraid."
"I still wish she'd write another The Lightkeeper's Heart," sighed Rosie.
"It's everyone's favorite," I agreed aloud. Matt didn't chime in, of course, but hid his smile of amusement behind his pint.
"That was a proper love story. One for the ages, like ... well, like Love Story, I suppose. Suppose now I'll have to go back to reading that stack of mysteries someone gave us for the charity sale. Female bounty hunters in leather seem more plausible these days, anyway."
"You can always reread and remember," I said. "I always reread my favorite books. When I'm not reading one of Matt's brilliant volumes on plant molecular structure," I added, tugging Matt's latest read across the table by the corner of its cover — one sporting a very scientific-looking dust jacket.
"That's yours, is it?" winked Rosie. "I thought maybe you'd found it on the street and given it a home out of pity. Looks to me like a book someone would abandon as quick as their first love."
"You don't forget your first love, though," I pointed out. "Then again, maybe you don't forget your first love in books, either." I pondered this notion, thoughtfully.
"I remember mine," said Rosie. "Babar the Elephant. My first favorite book, not love," she clarified. "I was eight...it was my first book from a lending library. I was rather fond of elephants as a child."
"Mine was Raggedy Ann," I said, fondly. I imagined its cover, a battered sepia-toned background with a very antiquated red-haired dolly in the middle. "I used to love that book. I carried it everywhere I went for months, until the spine started splitting apart."
"What was yours?" Rosie asked Matt.
"Hmm? Oh ... I don't remember, really."
"Don't remember?" she said. "Come now, doctor. You must remember some beloved childhood story. 'Fess up, as they say."
"I really haven't the faintest idea what it was," protested Matt.
Rosie and I exchanged glances. "I'll wager it was something scientific," she said. "Biography of some famous scientist or other."
"I see Matt as a Winnie the Pooh fan in childhood," I replied. In my head, I was picturing my image of Matt as a small boy, one I had pieced together from the few snatches of evidence from his past. "I think you would have loved Owl the best," I said to him. "And Eeyore second best."
"Honestly, I'm not quite sure anyone ever read the Pooh stories to me as a child," he answered. "And regardless of what you think —" he said to Rosie, "— I'm not entirely driven by science."
"Maybe it was Winnie, then," said Rosie.
"I think it was," I nodded, exchanging one last confidential look with Rosie. And since Matt was being teased unfairly at this point, we drifted the conversation back to modern novels.
Later that night, I tucked our wedding quilt more closely around myself against the cottage's cool night air. Lying awake in the dark, my cheek against the pillow, I thought about first loves and lost loves, and the difference between those you lose and those you give up.
My first school crush was one I was glad never panned out, of course. And my most serious relationship in Seattle had found its way here a few years ago, and delivered a big reminder that I was lucky to lose it. As for other loves — I had loved my hometown, the way most people do, but I traded it for the city. I loved Seattle, too, but I had left it for the life I had now, one I had given up everything in my past to live. So did I regret it? Did I build it into something impossibly wonderful, that it could never truly live up to?
"You're restless," Matt whispered. I realized I had woken him with my annoying habit of adjusting and readjusting the covers around me when I'm upset.
"I'm just not having an easy time sleeping," I said. "Maybe it was the pint I had at the pub."
"Mmm. Somehow I think it's not," said Matt. I decided not to answer him. I let silence fall between us.
"You've been different since we came home," said Matt.
"Different?" I scoffed. "Don't be silly."
I heard a noise that might be either a snort or a stifled laugh. "Julianne, please," he said. In a tone that was usually good at breaking down the last of my pretenses, if I was willing to let it.
I sighed. "I ... miss Seattle," I said. There. I had said it out loud.
"Of course," said Matt. "You would. You should. We spent months living there. It would be inhuman to feel any other way."
"It's not that," I said. "I'm worried. The world in this place went on while I was gone, Matt. I expected it to, I mean ... I was prepared. But not for how different I would feel in it."
I sucked in my breath. That was exactly what I had been trying to understand for weeks now. The feeling that had been eluding my words had finally taken shape. I felt like I was starting over, but in a place where I knew most of the names and faces and landmarks.
"A part of me feels like a stranger here sometimes," I said. "Is that weird? Because it feels weird. It feels wrong. I love this place. But I left it for just a little while, and now I don't know it the way I did before. Sometimes I feel as if I loved the fantasy of this place — the romantic idea of it in my head — and that's why I haven't readjusted."
"That's not true," answered Matt. And before I could roll over with a sigh of frustration, I felt him touch my arm. "I promise you. You left a part of yourself behind, Julianne. Just like in Seattle — that part of you will take some time to find its way back to you. You have to grieve for things that are lost, even if they were meant to be lost."
Meant to be lost. As in the changes that can't be helped, I suppose. Grieving for chances that can never be, and people who leave our lives, even for happy reasons. Missing landmarks that disappear, items that break, even favorite products that disappear from a shop's shelves for good.
I was missing the things I hadn't experienced here, and the farewells I didn't have time to make, big and small, before change happened. I was mourning the fact that I, Julianne, wasn't the same person I was five months ago — or, for that matter, five years ago, before I even came to this place. And a part of me was missing all the things I set aside in Seattle, this time and the first time I left it.
"I wish I knew where that part of me is," I said. "I need it to hurry up. I don't want to have a double case of homesick forever."
Matt laughed, softly. "The things we love most can hurt sometimes," he said. "Think of how lucky you are. How lucky we both are. To have wonderful experiences in more than one place — to have a life on either side of the Pond that made us happy — that's not something everyone can claim."
"Lucky," I said. "That's a good way to put it." I was extremely lucky, I knew. And the proof of it was lying right next to me. I should be grateful every moment that my choices led me to someone this special, who understood me as well as Matt did.
"We said we would make our life wherever we were happiest," said Matt. "That offer still stands. And if at some point it isn't here, then we'll deal with that moment."
I closed my eyes. Where had I truly been happiest? Christmas dinners, career victories, first love on one side of the Pond ... but the love of my life had come to me in one place. In one unforgettable place, in a moment that I would always remember. The one place in the world where I had been happiest hadn't changed, even if the last five months had been good.
I knew where I wanted to be. Maybe it would change, maybe it would become a place and a life far different from this one, but I had been right this time. This was exactly where I wanted to be.
"Home is where the heart is, remember?" Matt whispered.
"And mine can only be happy with yours," I said. "So lucky for me, this is where yours belongs." And I felt a little more like my old self as I teased him.
I would have to simply face the fact that there were some things I would always miss. But at least I knew what they were and where they were — not like the ones that had vanished without me even noticing, despite how much I had treasured them. I wondered what happened to my favorite childhood toys and beloved old Wizard of Oz lunch box. I wondered about my Raggedy Ann book, the one I used to carry around. It had gotten lost ages ago with the rest, in the manner of Rowena's toy dog, I supposed. Along with other possessions and mementoes that had managed to slip away without my quite remembering how it happened.
"Do you really not remember your first storybook?" I asked Matt. I glanced at him as he lay beside me, his arm still resting atop the coverlet. I could tell he was still awake, although his eyes were closed. "Or did you just not want to confess?"
"I don't remember," he answered. "Not the book, anyway. My earliest memory is only of being read to by my father."
His father had died when he was small, I knew. Matt hardly ever talked about him, and had only a handful of memories of him; and I had never heard this one before.
"I didn't know that," I said. "You never told me."
"It's only a brief memory. As I said, I don't remember the book anymore. I was quite young. Only the feeling of sitting with him as he held it open." He settled on his side to face me. Even in the dark, I could see his features by moonlight through the window, and look into his eyes.
My heart melted. "Oh, Matt," I said. I knew how much even a small memory must mean to him. A moment like that, the feeling of his father's arms, the sound of his voice ... it would definitely outlast whatever book's pages they had been turning that day.
"I'm afraid I don't remember many books from my childhood," he said. "Perhaps Michelle does. I'll remember to ask her someday if she recalls which ones we might have read as children."
"Your mum must have read to you," I said. "Sometimes."
"Sometimes," Matt agreed. "When she would come home at night, if she wasn't too tired. I remember ..." here, his smile became more tender, " ...I remember asking her to teach me how to read once. I brought her a book and she helped me sound out the words on the first page."
"What book?" I whispered, softly. If Matt would remember at any point, now was the moment.
"A science book." His smile became a grin, and I pushed his shoulder. "Quite seriously," he continued. "An old book I found on the shelf. A Child's Guide to the Natural World, or something like it, I think ... although I'm not sure, really. All about plants and microscopes, and insects and cocoons."
"So Rosie was right." I smiled. "No Winnie the Pooh for you."
"Are you surprised?" he asked.
"No," I answered. "It was meant to be. Your destiny to love those things." My hand stroked his cheek. "I'll bet your favorite was some book about trees, or flowers, or bees in the garden."
"Paddington Bear," said Matt, after a moment's thought. "I think it was Paddington. That's what my mother would read to me. I remember now. I remember the blue coat, and the floppy hat he wore. The Peruvian bear with a human family."
"The bear who loved marmalade, not honey." I drew Matt's head against my chest and stroked his hair, softly; I felt his arm encircle me above the blanket, curving itself around my waist. "I can see that." I held him tightly as we lay there, my arms around Matt and the appliqué quilt keeping us both warm tonight.
***
I did the breakfast dishes, scraping away the last of our morning eggs and fried bread into a scrap pail. Matthew was giving a presentation on his research for the foundation, so he had taken the early train to the university. Humming under my breath, I thought about paying a visit to the lending library, feeling a sudden urge to read Rowena St. James's last novel again. I wondered if they had a copy of Raggedy Ann in their children's section ... and maybe a Paddington book or two. Something for evenings in front of the fire, now that I had finished Gemma's book.
I heard a knock on the front door. "Coming!" I called. I wiped my hands on a dish towel, expecting it to be Lady Amanda with Edwin, since she sometimes dropped by on my day off. Edwin loved looking for bugs in the garden, and digging up earthworms with his bare fingers, much to his mother's disgust.
I pulled the plastic dump truck from beneath my desk and opened the door. There, on the other side, stood Rowena St. James. Behind her, parked alongside the street, was her car.
"Hi," I said.
She smiled, halfheartedly. "Rumors are true," she said. "I'm sure word has spread all around the village. The crazy recluse writer is giving up and going home."
"Not exactly those words," I said. "But, yeah ... I heard you were leaving soon."
"End of the week," she said. "I thought I would let my week's stay at the inn finish its course," she added. "Just in case something comes to me. I highly doubt it will at this point. I think I'll be taking my own advice and taking a long rest from my writing career."
She reached into her shoulder bag. "I wanted to be sure I returned your husband's books before I left," she said. "He was kind enough to lend them to me, the ones on gardening, you'll remember." She pulled out the stack. "The top one was my favorite. Ironically." A rueful smile crossed her lips with this confession. The book of Cornish myths lay atop the stack of Matt's volumes on the natural world.
I turned its pages, seeing the rather awful illustrations of the 'pobel vean' and the giant slain by Cornwall's founder. "I'm glad you enjoyed it," I said. "I just wish they had helped you find what you were looking for."
"Yes, well, that makes two of us," she said. "I had hoped that what I was looking for would be right in front of me when I drove through this village. But the instincts of writers are sometimes wrong, and this was one of those times." She sighed, and spread her hands, helplessly. "What can I do?"
"Try again?" I suggested. Rowena laughed.
"My dear Julianne, this place is interesting — and it will certainly be memorable for me — but that appears to be the limit of what I can glean from it. Believe me, no one wishes it had inspired me more than I do." She looked around her, and sighed. "These last few days, I've decided it's time for me to give up."
"I hate to hear you say it," I answered. "I still hope all you need is a little more time. Even if the book you write ends up having nothing to do with this place in the end."
Rowena's smile didn't give me much hope this was the case. "Tell your Matthew that I thank him for his help," she said. "And — who knows? Maybe someday there will be a romance about a gardener that captures the spirit of his work. Maybe even about an American girl who meets and marries him."
"You could still write it," I said. "A novel about a girl and a gardener who meet on the cliffs. Maybe someday down the road."
"Perhaps you should write it," she said. "It's your romance, after all. Nobody could do justice to it but someone who had the good fortune of living it."
"Me? A writer?" I echoed. "I don't think so. If it's up to me, it'll stay an anonymous tale, I assure you."
She shook her head. "That's a bit of a shame," she answered.
I heard a whistle from the road, and saw Rosie walking past. In her hand was a leash, a fluffy dog attached to it. I didn't recognize it at first, until the thinness and the snuffling mannerism gave it away.
"Davy?" I said. "Rosie, he looks wonderful!"
"He's still too thin," she called back. "But he can eat a can of doggy pâté in under a minute."
"Why, look at him," said Rowena, with a chuckle. "He's quite different now."
"Rosie's the saving grace of strays," I said. "She's hardly the 'crazy cat lady' people believe her to be."
"Poor waif. What happens to him? Will she give him a home?"
"She'll find one eventually," I said. "Maybe she can persuade Wallace Darnley to take him. He certainly seemed at home in that old fishing shack."
She shook her head. "A dog his size needs room to run," she answered. "Besides, think of the disgusting things he'd eat, living near all those boats. All those rotting fish traps and old nets ... maybe if your Mr. Darnley still kept a lighthouse, it would be one thing."
Davy wagged his tail, and uttered a sharp bark as he stood at the gate. Rowena hesitated, then spoke. "I suppose I should go. I'll bid Rosie and her furry friend goodbye, then I'm going to drive up the coast a little ways. Say goodbye to Penzance once more before I go."
My smile was sad. "I wish you luck," I said, one last time. "I hope you find what you're looking for. And that this isn't the end of your novels."
Her own smile dimmed. "I can't say what I see in the future," she answered. "Cheerio, my friend."
She turned to leave, and I watched as she and Rosie chatted at the foot of our garden path, with Rowena ruffling Davy's fur. She even gave the thin stray a farewell hug, the dog licking her cheek in return. To my surprise, he offered her his paw, and, with a laugh, she shook hands with him. Then her little car pulled away, driving westwards towards the highway to Penzance.
Rosie sighed. "Guess that's that, eh?" she said to me.
"I guess so," I answered. I looked at the scruffy dog, who was sniffing my shoes. "Did you know that Davy could shake hands?"
"Not a clue," said Rosie. "He's a dog of hidden talents, it would seem. Come on, my lad. Time we were homeward bound." She gave the leash a gentle tug, and the two of them walked on.
***
"So what did you think?" Gemma asked. "Was it awful? Should I quit? Was it a bit too dull? I could make it more exciting — I could have her go up to London on weekend —"
"Slow down," I said. "I haven't even had a chance to say anything yet." Gemma, who was clutching her loathed-and-loved notebook with both hands, tried to calm herself now at Kitty's old desk.