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But then, with that worry gone, another surfaced, and it was one she was not yet ready to face.
After her visit with the Otterhams, Mrs. Otterham thanking her profusely for the handkerchiefs—“They be the most beautiful I’ve e’er received. I don’t e’en want to use ’em!” “Ye best use ‘em, Talwyn, so ye stop usin’ me own.”—Livvy walked through the rain to where the sea pinks grew along the cliffs’ edges.
There, she picked a few of the small, spindly flowers, the first of many that would soon carpet the Mount in round bursts of trembling blossoms.
Gathering the long stems together, she pulled out a thin ribbon from her reticule and used it to tie the sea pinks as one before climbing back down the Mount to where the graveyard was situated, directly south of the causeway.
Rain trickled from the clouds above, as if reluctant to douse the Mount after the clear evening before. But Livvy didn’t mind the moisture. She always chose rainy days to visit Mother’s grave. Rainy days meant less people there.
Instead of focusing on what was to come, she kept her mind on her time with August, but far too soon, the graveyard came into view, and her thoughts on the night before ended.
She had done this for a decade now. She thought it would get easier with time, but each anniversary that came, Livvy still felt that same uneasy feeling stirring in her heart.
Even now, she stood outside the small gate to the graveyard, staring at the back of the marker she knew to be Mother’s.
The good memories returned first, just as they always did.
Mother teaching her how to stitch, though she couldn’t stitch a lick herself. The time they spent laughing in the middle of a sermon at the sight of two red squirrels bickering over acorns outside the church windows. When they use to race across the causeway and Mother would feign exhaustion so Livvy would win.
Mother was considered odd by those on the Mount, too. But she didn’t care. She taught Livvy not to care, either, to embrace her true nature and to let people think what they may. And Livvy had, for a time.
But after Mother’s death, after the words she’d spoken, Livvy stopped taking her advice.
The sorrowful memories came flooding in next.
How Mother would leave for weeks at a time, claiming to visit relatives on the mainland, though she’d never let Livvy or Father join her. How Mother always fought with Father when she returned.
How desperately she’d hated living on the Mount.
“I be trapped ’ere,” Livvy would hear her say at night through the thin walls in their house. “And ye and Livvy be the cause of it.”
Tears filled Livvy’s eyes as she clutched the sea pinks tightly to her chest. Would Mother even like the sea pinks Livvy placed on her grave each year? Or did she truly despise flowers and plants like she’d told Father?
“What sort o’ man wastes ’is life away by gardenin’? Flowers and bushes and trees. They be pointless. ’Elpless. Just like ye.”
Then the worst memory of them all returned. When Mother beckoned Livvy into her room, her eyes gaunt and cheeks colorless.
“I ’ave to tell ye somethin’, Lavinia, me darlin’,” she’d whispered. “Somethin’ ye must swear to ne’er tell another soul. Somethin’ not e’en your father must know.”
As clear as day, she was sent right back to that moment, but it came as no surprise to Livvy. Every year she went through this, the pain, the sorrow, the regret, reliving those frightful words Mother had spoken that had rattled all Livvy held dear.
“Ye might not be who ye think ye be, Lavinia.”
Those feelings of fear and worry returned tenfold until Livvy finally managed a prayer heavenward. A prayer to forgive, to forget, to release her anger, and to focus on the truth—that her mother had ghosts in her past, just like everyone did.
But that was not Livvy’s fault.
Within a few moments, with the rain rushing around her, sliding off her bonnet and clicking against the rhododendrons and hedges that surrounded the graveyard, that familiar sense of peace returned to Livvy’s heart, and she breathed a sigh of relief.
Each year, it became easier and easier to find that peace, as did her ability to release the anger she’d held for years.
With a newfound sense of purpose, she walked through the gate and entered the graveyard, her eyes focused intently on the marker. She walked around the other stone crosses of villagers and beyond the large monuments erected for the family of the St. Aubyns until she reached the simple, curved headstone Father had purchased for Mother.
IN MEMORY OF
LAVINIA MAY
WIFE & MOTHER
