Page 89 of The Curse of Penryth Hall
Tamsyn reached out for me with her hand. “I know you don’t understand why.”
Her sentence answered my question. Instead of fleeing I walked over, took her hand, and fell to the floor beside her. Her eyes were dry and clear with a resolve and certainty I did not share. My fingers closed around hers, rubbing the bones along the back of her hand with my thumb.
“You’ll be returning to Exeter, I expect.”
I swallowed hard and nodded.
“I think that’s for the best. I…” Her voice caught in her throat, the slightest tremor there revealing her distress.
“Tamsyn, you’ve been through a great deal. There’s no need for you to spea—”
“Hush. You always talk and talk and talk and I need to say my piece for now. I need for you to understand me. Truly understand me for once. You and I have been at sixes and sevens ever since you arrived here. I’ve tried a dozen ways to explain to you, but I think… I think perhaps now you can understand.”
I snapped my mouth shut.
“I gave Alice Martin freedom. Something I never had. I wish to God that someone would have given me that same gift. Though I don’t know I’d have been brave enough to grab on to it. Not then at least.”
I frowned, not understanding.
“You see, my entire life, ever since I was a little girl, hasbeen mapped out for me. First, my father. Then my dreams with George. Then you. You remember our plans, don’t you? Where we’d go. What we’d do? Flittering around like larks. Never staying in one place too long. Seeking warmth and excitement, but never anything deeper. Never anything with roots. Permanence.”
I did. I’d built my hopes upon those dreams. Dreams that she’d dashed upon the rocks. But to hear them spoken back to me, they sounded hollow. Shallow. Not that I longed for permanence—never that—but I longed for… something, something intangible that I couldn’t articulate if I tried.
“I realized along the way that those things were never my dreams at all. They were yours, Ruby. Your dreams. Your plans. Your passion. It’s why I left. I loved you too much and I knew if I had stayed, you’d have either broken my heart or clipped your own wings for me. I saw it then and made the decision for the both of us.”
“But—”
She held up a hand to silence me. “No. You see, I have never begrudged you your dreams. Not a one. I thought—believed—that loving you enough would make your dreams my own. That I could be happy to live in your shade. That my loving you would make you stop taking those risks and stop being so…you… but we shouldn’t ever try to change those we love, should we?”
I swallowed hard, still adjusting to her words. But she’d asked for my silence, so I was giving it to her. Letting her speak until no words remained. I could do that.
“But I’ve come to realize only recently that I subsumed myself to you then. To everyone who ever mattered.” She turned to me with a sad small smile.
This might be the most honest we’d been with each other, and I didn’t know what to do with her truth.
“One can’t live like that forever.” Tamsyn pulled her hand from mine and shifted the sleeping child on her lap. He let out a little moan and curled back against her. “Existing as nothing more than an appendage. An afterthought. Daughter. Wife. Lover. Friend. I suppose I followed along in that way because it was easier. Simpler not to fight the tide. It’s my nature, you see—I’m not brave like you. I’m not particularly ambitious either. It would have been enough for me to marry George and live here in this village. Raise our children. I could have been happy like that. Picking flowers in the meadow, being a mother. A wife. Perhaps having a dog or three. I’ve never even had a dog, come to think of it. I might have even been able to make a good life with Edward, were he faithful. You see, I’m not a dreamer, Ruby. I never was.”
Tears welled up in my eyes, not for myself, but for her. Had this woman truly been standing there before me all these years and I never saw, never listened to what she had to say—just ran roughshod over her like all the men in her life had done since the day she came into the world? But the truth was evident, starkly written across her lovely face. I’d just ignored all the signs.
“But the truth is, I was afraid. Terrified to stand on my own feet. To claim something for my own. You see, it was easier to stay with Edward, vile as he was, because I had a place in this world. I was so afraid of what it would make me if I broke away. If I left him, who was I?”
Her words struck like little shards of broken glass, embedding themselves into my chest. “I never meant to make you feel that way.”
“Of course you didn’t.” She tucked a lock of hair behind my ear and kissed me softly. “I made that choice for myself. To put myself second to everyone. But I think… I think… that for once I’d like to live a little more like you do.” She flushed atthe implication of her words. “Not perhaps in the particulars. I’ve never been quite that daring, but I think I would like to discover who I am and see if there’s anything of substance left beneath my skin.”
“You know there is.”
“I suspect there might be, but I need time to find her, I think. To be alone for a while.”
I furrowed my brow. “But you aren’t alone. You have your son and your writing.”
“And that’s why it’s become important. I hadn’t really thought… hadn’t imagined that I could lose Jori before today. And in an instant with that woman holding my son in her arms, I almost lost everything that truly mattered. But I know now who I need to be. For myself and for him. It’s a separate sort of love—the kind one has for one’s child. The sort that makes you want to be better, try harder. To be worthy of this little creature entrusted to you even though you know you’re destined to fail.” Tamsyn took my hands in her own. “You see, Ruby, I think I need to grow up. Be someone my son can be proud to call his mother—because right now I don’t think I’m that person at all.”
I swallowed hard.
“Please say you understand. Of all people in this world, I thought you might.”
She looked up at me through damp lashes and in that moment I supposed I did. I’d found her again during this blood-filled week—my dearest friend—hidden beneath all the pain and lies and secrets, and I couldn’t help but be glad of it.
