Page 96 of The Phoenix Bride
“I’m certain,” Sam says with remarkable patience, as I have asked him the same thing many times before. He squeezes myshoulder. “Whatever happens, I’ll be here. You know that, don’t you?”
I smile at him. “I do.”
I turn to the riverbank, watching the crowd on the shore as they stroll in the evening sun. There are so many people, so many things to see. It isn’t a cavernous estate in Kent, where one is invited to linger on the past, to watch the snow fall and the hearth burn and remember what has been lost. Memories or no, London is full of distraction.
Even if he doesn’t want me, even if it ends in disaster—maybe here, I will still be able to forget.
—
That night, Sam and I go to a party at the Myddletons’. Over glasses of port, he tells me about a scheme to open a coffeehouse that I only pay halfhearted attention to, distracted as I am by thoughts of David. We eventually get sucked into a drunkengame of whist, and the next morning, we both wake up late, hungover and irritable.
I muster the courage to leave the bed by eleven. Heading downstairs, I see that there is a package in the foyer, clearly having been delivered earlier that morning. It is large and flat and rectangular, wrapped in brown paper; I presume it is for Sam, who is still asleep upstairs. But then I see there has been a note delivered with it, and the note is addressed to me, in a familiar, elegant script. I realize with dawning dread whom the package is from.
I read the note. I know I should not, but I read it anyway.
Dearest Cecilia,
So long since I last heard from you; so long since we spoke. You are across the street, and yet you have never felt sodistant. Whatever slight you have felt I have done you, whatever grudges you harbor, please forgive me for it, and know that I will always forgive you anything in return. I miss you terribly.
I hope married life is treating you well. How far you have come, little Celia. I am proud of you and proud of the match you have made—my only wish is that you had let me come to the wedding.
I would like to have another portrait made of you and me, or you and your husband—whatever you would prefer. It has been time enough, I think, that the last painting I gave you be returned. I took the liberty of writing to the Thorowgood estate, and they were glad enough to send this to you. I hope Sir Grey does not find it too much of an imposition. I know how important it was to you. It is my sincerest wish that it will remind you of all the joys you have experienced in your life, and all the strength you have derived from their loss, and how much I—your dearest sister—have always loved you.
My warmest regards,
Margaret
I drop the note. With trembling hands, I reach forward and rip the wrapping away.
It is my old wedding portrait. Will and I stand before rolling grassy hills, me in my blue gown with my pearls in my ears, him in his navy doublet. His hand is in mine, his eyes are dancing, his hair gold and curling. I had forgotten how much I looked like Margaret in it; the woman at his side could have been her, were it not for the sharpness of her jaw and the narrowness of her eyes.
I haven’t seen it in years, but once this painting was as familiar to me as the veins of my wrist. Will had hung it on our bedroom wall, and it had remained there until the day he died. He was very fond of it. Sometimes he would stand in front of it and smile at our painted faces, humming tunelessly to himself.
But I have always hated it. I hate it still; I hate the way I look in it, expressionless with a face that both was and was not my own. And as I look at it now, I remember how, one morning, I had told him, “It is not very good,” thinking to convince him to move it elsewhere.
“Oh, my love,” he had replied. “It needn’t be good. It is a reminder, that is all.”
“Now that I am here, you don’t need a reminder. Do you expect to forget me?”
“I shall never forget you.”
“Oh, indeed.”
“I shall love you for forever, Cecilia,” he’d said. “Always, without limit nor ending. If you love another, even then.”
And he took me in his arms, and he kissed me, as the wedding portrait watched blankly from the wall.
Now it watches me again. And even though its bride is not truly Cecilia, and it never will be, perhaps I should envy her all the same: She has Will with her, always. She will never know that loss. She will never know any loss at all.
But framed as she is, still and silent as she is—perhaps I should pity her instead. I don’t know why Margaret sent this to me. She might have genuinely thought I would be happy, or she might have done it out of vindictiveness—but I think I am glad that she did. For so long, the painting has been trapped in that attic, an image unseen. Better to be made into something new than to remain purposeless. Better to burn and rebuild than to crumble slowly.
I return to the bedroom, where Sam is lying facedown on the mattress, head covered by the pillow.
I pull the pillow away. He groans.
“Sam,” I say. “Get up. We have to see Jan.”
—
