Children of the Same Water

Bonus Epilogue

Rain had settled over Blackmere so thoroughly that afternoon that there was very little to do besides remain indoors and attempt not to lose one’s mind from boredom.

I’d found myself in my father’s study after luncheon, where Cyril’s book still rested upon the shelves where it always had.

I must have passed it a thousand times growing up without ever paying it much attention before now.

But by evening, I’d somehow read the entire thing through whilst my parents remained out visiting somewhere, and I stared down at the final pages once again, struggling to reconcile the parents described there with the ones I’d known.

The study door opened behind me a short while later.

I looked up to see Father stop just inside the doorway, having noticed the book in my hands.

Something unreadable passed briefly across his face, and I disliked at once the feeling that everyone in my family apparently knew things regarding my own parents and grandparents that I somehow did not.

For a moment, he said nothing. He only crossed towards the drinks cabinet and poured himself a whisky in the manner of a man who had long suspected this conversation would eventually arrive and merely hoped it might do so somewhat later in my life. “I assume you have questions,” he said as he recapped the bottle, lifting his brow at me. “So, go on.”

“Why did no one ever tell me any of this?” I asked as I pushed the book across the side table.

“Because,” he said as he lifted the glass to his mouth, “it is hardly a story for children. Is it?”

Good God, I’d already spent the better part of a year away at boarding school. So why wasn’t I old enough to at least know the uglier portions of my own family’s history? “I am not a child anymore.”

That earned me the faintest glance over the rim of his whisky glass before he shook his head to agree. “No,” he said. “I suppose you are not.”

Father drew a slow breath and rubbed his chin before letting his hand fall away again. The hesitation alone was unnerving, for my father was not ordinarily a man who struggled for words. “It was a dark time for us,” he said at last. “And I think we preferred to leave it in Hearthwick, where it belonged.”

I’d heard my parents’ stories about their childhood spent together all my life. Having seen the photographs scattered throughout Blackmere often enough, I scarcely noticed them anymore. But reading Cyril’s book, I realised suddenly why all those stories and photos seemed to stop at a certain point.

It was as if they went from childhood to marriage with nothing in between those points. And now, I suppose the reason for that made sense. “You searched for her for a very long time,” I said. “Longer than I have been alive.”

Father twisted his mouth at that before giving the faintest shrug. It was always that way with him. Nothing ever appeared especially remarkable when he spoke of it afterward, no matter how impossible the thing itself actually sounded. “A minor inconvenience compared to what your mother endured while I did so,” he said.

Until now, my parents had always been almost painfully ordinary to me, as all parents likely are to their children. And finding out they were much more complicated than I’d ever understood was entirely disorienting. Worse still was that I couldn’t imagine putting my own life on hold for nearly twenty years searching for one woman everyone else already believed dead. The thought left me feeling wholly inadequate about being a man before I had even become one at all. “I am not certain I could have done the same,” I admitted.

He looked at me as if I were being rather ridiculous and pulled another book from amongst the others. “Of course you would. It is in your blood.”

The book he brought with him appeared far older than Cyril’s, bound in leather blackened with age, the corners worn smooth from generations of handling, with the Ashcombe crest still pressed faintly into the cover beneath the years. “The Ashcombes and Blackmere have stood beside one another for centuries. You know this,” he said as he sat opposite me. “But I do not think anyone has ever properly explained to you why.”

He settled the book against his knee and slid a finger beneath the cover to open it, letting the heavy pages rest against his forearm while he reached for the glasses lying upon the table beside him. “That year, the winter sickness had already taken half of Sussex,” he said as he scanned the faded ink across the page. “Perhaps more.”

I leaned forward slightly despite myself, trying to make out the faded writing across the pages from where I sat opposite him. “The Ashcombes had suffered badly from it. Our ancestor had already buried nearly everyone else belonging to his house until all that remained were a handful of his loyal men.”

He turned another page before glancing up at me. “He had sent his wife away to a convent nearer the coast months earlier to protect her from the sickness. For if anything were to happen to her, House Ashcombe would have disappeared altogether.”

Thunder rolled somewhere far off as the storm outside worsened further, and Father went to the next page. “But the baby was close to being due, so he was returning home with her when they came upon a wicked storm and were left stranded when their carriage became too burdened with the snow for the horses to go on. And to make matters worse, his son decided at that same moment that he would very much like to be born. “

He paused there long enough to lift his whisky towards his mouth, and I waited somewhat impatiently for him to continue. “Lord Blackmere came upon them shortly afterward,” he finally said. “And despite the sickness having only just passed through his own lands, he refused to leave a woman and unborn child stranded in the storm. So he brought the Ashcombes and the remaining soldiers back to Blackmere to shelter here until the weather passed. And Thomas Ashcombe was born in this very house the following day.”

“Ashcombe understood that his family still existed only because Blackmere had opened its doors to them. And though he had little left besides his gratitude and a few soldiers, he swore an oath that should Blackmere ever stand in need of House Ashcombe, they would answer the call.”

For a moment, neither of us spoke again. I looked down towards the floor, trying to make sense of what any of it meant for me.

I was both Rowen and Ashcombe. Blackmere belonged to my blood no differently than the oath itself did. And I wondered what would someday be required of me in return for carrying both names.

“I realise it is not quite so dramatic as what your mother lived through,” he said as he closed the chronicle. “But answering the call to Blackmere is part of who we are, for we owe them our very existence. Do we not?”

Father leaned forward slightly, tilting his head just enough to pull my attention back towards him again. “And someday,” he said, “when you love someone as I love your mother, you will understand why I had no other choice but to find her. I simply could not live without her, nor call myself Ashcombe if I allowed the Rowen line to end with her.”

He fell quiet after that, his face changing.

For a moment, I thought perhaps he meant to say something more before deciding against it. He looked away from me altogether, setting his fist to his mouth as though attempting to collect himself.

The sight alone unsettled me, because my father was not a man given to emotion. Certainly not enough that I might notice his eyes beginning to shine in the firelight before he lowered them towards the old book. “And I would not have you or your sister. The thought that I came so near to never having this life at all horrifies me still.”

Father laid the book aside and reached across the space between us for my hand instead, gripping it firmly enough to make the point plain before he spoke again. “So when you someday have the woman you cannot live without, you make certain you do whatever is required to keep her safely beside you. For what you stand to lose is too precious to risk otherwise. Please remember that, George.”

I nodded, though truthfully, I found myself somewhat overwhelmed by the entire conversation. Because discovering he was no less human than any other man somehow proved far more frightening than reassuring. And yet somewhat beautiful in its own way.

Then, just as suddenly as the strange vulnerability had appeared in him, Father reached up and rested his hand against the back of my head before pulling me forward enough to press a kiss against my brow.

He reclaimed his whisky and settled back into his chair, turning his attention towards the rain beyond the windows as though none of it had happened at all. Because some stories did not truly end. They only handed themselves forward.