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“It’s a handsome family, William.”
“I have been intensely angry at my father since meeting Jane and Peter and Daisy. I have been angry at him for a long time before that, Louisa, for letting me down and for letting my mother down. For ruining his health and hers and all but destroying his inheritance. And yet I would never have met you if he had not done these things. And so I must forgive him.” He ran his hand over the newly laid tombstone. “I must forgive him, but I’m not sure I can.”
“I think forgiveness must take time, William,” Louisa said. How wise she was for one so young. “I think we must choose to forgive and try to remember what goodness there may have been. And perhaps one day in the future, we will think about how things were and discover that the pain is gone. That the forgiveness is complete.”
“That day is not yet,” William said. “But I believe you are right. I can at least begin to forgive him when he has given me such a gift as you.” He paused before continuing. “You once asked me if I was happy.”
“I remember.”
“Are you happy, my love? Are you experiencing that joyful state of being in which one is full of contentment and blissful satisfaction?”
“I am,” she said, smiling at the words she’d tossed at him in anger only a few short weeks prior.
“I am too,” he replied.
He drew Louisa into his arms and kissed her––a long, sweet kiss that filled his soul with contentment and blissful satisfaction and joy for the future. “Do you think those who rest here have had their peace disturbed by that kiss?” he asked her afterward.
“I think they would welcome any kind of true affection and love,” Louisa said, clever, sweet woman that she was.
He kissed her again and then placed her hand in the crook of his arm and led her from the churchyard toward their home and their future.
