Mary
It’s a rare, brilliant day. The sort you get sometimes at the end of March, when the air is fresh and the sky is so blue it nearly breaks your heart. Things are blooming, buds unfurling, life turning and returning—because that’s the way it works. We travel the circle until at long last we come round again, to look ourselves in the eye as judge and jury.
I am not proud of the mistakes I made, or the hurt I caused, though I was not alone in that. There is blame enough to go around, I suppose, if anyone wants it. But I don’t. Samuel Rourke was a good man who did a bad thing, and I forgave him long ago. And now, at long last, it seems his son has found a way to make peace with the past as well.
I feel neither sadness nor loss as I look upon this place where my home once stood, the scene of all my heartbreak and grief. I’m glad they have razed it, and buried the last of its wreckage. It should have happened long ago. But then, everything happens in its time.
I never expected so many people, but I’m glad they’ve come to see my boy, the prince I lost, and then found again, do this fine thing for the people of Starry Point—and for his brother. It makes my heart catch in my throat to look at him as he steps up onto the dais. He is so like his father, tall and handsome and good. And now, finally, back where he belongs.
Some small corner of my heart, the one I keep for Peter alone, breaks a little, but smiles, too, as the shovel is thrust into the earth and the new sign with its shiny brass plaque is unveiled.
PETER ROURKE MEMORIAL PARK
It’s a fine thing—a right thing—and I hope, as the crowd begins to gather around the dais to shake my Evan’s hand, that his brother is watching and sees this thing that is being done in his honor, that he knows he is not forgotten, not truly gone from our hearts.
Still, we must all of us go forward.
I am nearly healed from the accident now, but will not linger at the inn—an addled old woman forever underfoot. Neither will I return to Hope House, safe now from the mayor, thanks to Lane. Instead, I will have a small apartment close by, with a girl in twice a week to see to the washing and dusting—and to no doubt count my pills. I will have my drawing to fill my time, and visits with Lane and my boy. R.B. has also promised to come up from Raleigh, though I don’t know why he would bother after the trouble I’ve been to him over the years. It shames me now to think how shabbily I treated him when we were young. He’s been such a dear friend, truer and more constant than I either knew or deserved. This time I will be kinder.
There’s a clamor now, cheers and applause, as my boy is finishing up his speech. I will never look at this wide green space, where a home once stood and a family once lived, and not mourn all that was lost. But I will always be glad, too, to see children at play here, and old people resting on its benches, to know that young lovers will come here to walk its paths.
I have found a kind of peace, you see—not a perfect healing, but a scarring over of the broken places, which is more than I dared hope for. Perhaps it is only the new pills, but I think not. It’s a hard thing to forgive those who wound us, but harder still to forgive the wounds we inflict upon ourselves. I have done that now. I have found my bit of truth and resigned my demons to the sea.
I have sought redemption for so long, scanning empty horizons for it, only to find it has been within reach all along. I had only to let go of yesterday to claim it. Time, you see, is the enemy, a trap of our own making. The past is lost forever, a wasteland of all that could have been and never was, while the future stretches endlessly before us, always an hourglass’s worth of sand beyond our reach. Today, then, is what we have left—the here and the now—to make our wishes, and to fight for the life we want.