Page 5 of Memories of the Lost

“It speaks to you.”

Tillie laughed a little. “Literally.” She shook it off. “Come on, we need to tell Jon we’re leaving.”

We. As if they were a couple.

CHAPTER TWO

Wulfecombe, Devon, UK

Clare Evely awoke to the smell of coffee and cinnamon and rain. A big warm hand fell on her back. “Time to wake up, love.”

She rolled over luxuriously, bumping into a much-battered cat who was, by their best guess, at least seventeen. He croaked at her, then settled back down. Clare was finally rested after a three-week stretch of back-to-back ceremonies—weddings, a funeral, a handfasting, and her daughter’s thirty-seventh birthday, a particularly precious thing now that Sage was pregnant. Clare had several grandchildren that she shared with Levi’s children, but Sage had walked a difficult road, and this pregnancy was a blooming of a life that had been entirely too full of challenges.

“Good morning.” Her voice was throaty. “Did you bring me a cinnamon roll, you wicked man?”

Levi rubbed her belly with his giant hand. “You’ve earned it.” He kissed her forehead. “I’ve got to run. Nan Granger’s mare is failing.”

“Ah.” She squeezed his hand. “It’s never easy, but she loves that horse like a husband. I should bake her a cake.”

He grunted in agreement, and Clare rolled over to watch him dress. He winked as he noticed, shedding everything to stand naked in the cold bedroom with its fading William Morris wallpaper. Light came inthe dormers and skated over his big, solid form. He was a cheerful, lusty man, and it showed in his belly and thighs, weight he carried easily on his six-foot-five-inch frame. She had made a great many mistakes in her life, but Levi was not one of them. They’d been together for thirty years, and she thanked the goddess for him every day.

Reaching out, she brushed the back of his thigh. “Hurry home tonight, and I’ll cook foryoufor a change.”

He laughed and clapped her hip. “It’s cooking you’re wanting, is it?” After forty years in England, much of his Jamaican accent had been subsumed in the West Country cadence, but it came through now.

“Maybe.”

“Mm. I’ll get back as soon as I can.” He finished dressing and bent to kiss her again, then made a little sound of pain and pressed a hand to his low back.

“Still bothering you?”

“Just gettin’ old, I fear.”

“Never!” She sat up. “Take some ibuprofen, will you?”

“Already done.”

Clare watched him depart, noting the way he favored his right side, giving his walk a bit of a rocking limp. It had been bothering him for quite a while. Time he should see a doctor. “Don’t overdo!” she called after him.

“You’re the one! I’m not the one who hasn’t had a free day in weeks. Take an easy day yourself, missus.”

“I’ll try. Liam’s coming next week. I have a lot to do.”

“He won’t mind. Give yourself a day.”

“I’ll try if you will.”

He grunted and was gone.

She scrolled through her phone, drinking coffee and nibbling the cinnamon roll. There were the usual texts from her daughters and the usual zero from her sons. Sage wanted the recipe for her seedy bread; her stepdaughter Meg reported back on a test for her youngest’s bad throat—no strep. Meg’s sister, Amelia, was always the chattiest. Shelived on a nearby farm, and they shared the most in terms of interests. She reported that the daffodils were budding, and she had a great crop of lettuces already. Clare texted each one back, then texted the boys, too—neither she nor Levi had had any before they married, but the union gave them two, Ben and Arthur. An enormous brood of children, everyone said. She wouldn’t have minded more, honestly, but time ran out.

She texted them in a group:Don’t forget Liam will be here for Sunday lunch. Remember, no one but you and your families. No friends.

They were all a little swoony over their famous cousin coming to Sunday lunch out in the wilds of Devon, and Clare had had to crack down on the whole group of them. The girls remembered him, of course, but only as a boy, not the celebrated man he’d become.

Liam was her dearest friend’s youngest. Helen had brought her brood home from New Zealand for a summer after the shocking, devastating death of her husband. The lot of them had stayed the season, healing in the sea air with cousins and good food and the ever-changing host of rescued animals that populated the farm. Clare had taken the broken Liam under her wing, patching him up with greenhouse experiments and the feeding of the limping, blind, and ancient pets. He’d proven to be a good correspondent, apart from a long stretch in his twenties, and they’d carried on a lively discussion of life, books, and the nature of spiritual pursuits for decades. She deeply looked forward to his visit.

Phone calls and laundry and garden tasks would wait. The lure of fresh air tugged her out the door and down the forest path she’d been walking since young adulthood, beneath branches just now swelling with the buds of leaves or flowers, still wet in the aftermath of last night’s rain.