The Memory Keeper

Epilogue

Leafless trees stretched to the sky of wrinkled parchment. Natalie carried a box in her arms down a cobble stone street, the carriage that had dropped her off rattling away, horse hooves fading in the whispering breeze. She shifted the box in one arm as she pushed open the iron gate and ambled up the little stone path to knock on the door. When there was no answer, she rang the bell. Throughout the large house, she could hear the notes echoing.

A minute later, Peter stood at the threshold.

He wore a long-sleeved navy shirt and his familiar suspenders, with black trousers. His usually tousled hair was parted the way it had been at the Coldton palace's dinner the night they danced. Natalie very nearly dropped the box and flung her arms around him. How she longed to bury her face into his chest. To hold back was more difficult than she had thought it would be. He looked at her, and she searched for any sliver of familiarity in his eyes. If she saw any, she could not say if it was imagined or not. The backs of her eyes started to burn.

Behind him, Natalie saw Alice. She stood and walked to Peter's side, sweeping imaginary dust from her floral patterned gown, smiling at Natalie. Her eyes no longer looked doe-like and lost, her hair pulled from her face, combed into a ponytail at the nape of her neck, her soft features like a doll.

Peter eyed the box in Natalie's arms. "I'm sorry, do I know you?"

Natalie had tried hundreds of times to prepare herself for this, perhaps not unlike Peter had before coming to her office all those weeks ago, but those countless hours in front of the mirror, rehearsing what she would say, melted away. She felt the hollow place in her chest expand, making it hard to breathe. Suddenly everything in the box felt heavy and impossible.

The letters Peter had written to himself, the rosemary potions Piper had made, the train ticket she had found in her cabinet from the memory of she and Peter when they first met, as well as the records she had kept when Peter was her client. In time, she hoped, he would let her explain. She planned to show up every day with the box, if she had to.

She took a deep breath and tried her best to smile, looking up into those blue eyes she loved so much.

"I'm afraid I can't say we have."