“Yes,” she said, knowing what he wanted. “I will come away with you.”

When Merian came into her room that evening, it was three days since her operation and the ichor still had not finished draining from her wounds. She was inflamed with it and he could she what pain she endured, lying there wrapped in the covers of their marriage bed.

“How are you this evening, Sanne?” he asked.

She no longer recognized him. She saw only a very old man at her side and wondered who it was who had found his way into her room. She looked around then, wondering where Merian was, because it was the time he usually came and he was always very punctual.

When the old man took up her hand, she grew increasingly frightened and began to scream out that he would have Jasper Merian to contend with if he treated her roughly. When Merian still did not come she screamed even louder, until her first husband appeared at her side and took her finally in both his hands.

Before, he had only held her by the fingers or else offered an arm as they strolled in the garden of Stonehouses, but this time he lifted her up as he had on their wedding night and promised no harm would befall her ever.

“I will take care of you,” he pledged.

“Where we will live? Where are we going now?” she wanted to know.

“Back across the ocean, my love,” he answered to her. “Remember?”

“Will I like it there?” she asked.

“You will. We will make a house for our love.”

“What if I do not?”

“You mustn’t leave me again,” he said.

“You can’t ask me this.”

“I am your husband again.”

“Yes,” she said, recognizing the truth. “I will try to be a good wife and make a good home for us there across the ocean.”

“You were always the best wife ever there was.”

“That was on the coast,” she answered. “I do not know how it will be for us across the sea.”

“You know many people there,” he assured her.

“Merian is not there,” she said, “nor Purchase. Merian is still at Stonehouses, and my son Purchase is gone. Will they join us?”

“You must rest,” he told her. “It is a long journey.”

“Yes, we must start out.”

The two of them left together then, as he took Sanne in his arms away from Stonehouses, back over the ocean. Once more across the sea.

At her wake Merian spoke very little, being both too lonesome to talk and upset at having the preacher in the house. Standing afterward in the meadowland he had long ago claimed for a graveyard he only listened as the preacher finished his sermon and Magnus and the other pallbearers began to fill in her grave. He was himself too old to shovel the soil back into place but could only watch until they were finished with the task. When they were done, and the grave was stilled over with earth, he issued to them one final instruction. “Dig mine just next to it.”

“Yea, there will be time for that,” Content said, standing beside his ancient friend.

“It was you and Dorthea who brought us together,” Merian replied. “You did not tell me then it would be so short a while.”

He walked over to the preacher and pushed a handful of coins into his hand, then turned and went back toward the house.

When the other mourners entered, Adelia had laid a table with foods and tried her best to make everyone comfortable, recalling from earlier times what the visitors and inhabitants of Stonehouses each required — so that when Content called for something they were able to offer him an eau de vie, and the doctor had his claret, and Magnus, when he went to the table, found a small pot of warm milk with his coffee.

He picked it up and smiled at her as he brought the cup to his lips. This was their first intimate interaction since she had come back to the house; he had done his best to avoid her the entire time, knowing she was there on Sanne’s account and not his, and he did not want her to be reminded of their troubles before.

As he looked at her he remembered what he promised Sanne on her deathbed. He knew she would not have told Adelia what had been agreed upon between the two of them, and he struggled to decide whether he was bound to an old woman’s delirious request. He had managed in the time he had been there to find appropriate means of dealing with those urges he could not control, but for the rest he felt as he had all his life. Seeing Adelia then made him curse himself for being so quick to give in to what Sanne had asked of him. He did not know if he could maintain his end of the deal, or even if she would still want him should he presume to try.

“You look very pretty today, Adelia,” he said boldly, just as he had in the kitchen many years earlier.

He had not meant to invoke that memory and worried she would take offense, but Adelia only accepted the compliment with a bashful smile and withdrew into the kitchen.

Magnus realized he did not know where Merian was and searched for him throughout the house until he finally found him sitting in the parlor, where he had been counting what was lost to him and what was left. When he saw Magnus, the old man looked his son over and asked him what his plans for things were.

“No plans but what we have been doing,” Magnus answered.

“That is not what I mean,” Merian told him. “I mean what will you do with yourself when you are alone here?”

“There’s always someone about,” Magnus said to him.

“Ware,” his father said, “that is not good enough. Out here by yourself, this is the loneliest place known to the world.”

“Let me help you to your room,” Magnus offered. Merian, however, continued looking out his window.

“We are exiled here. One day, when we are purified, we will be rejoined with what is beloved.”

Magnus could see then the light had gone out from Merian’s eyes. He thought he knew what had propelled him in his ambition there, but he could see it die that day, and with that it seemed revealed to him that this was never what the older man really wanted but was some elaborate substitution for something that could never be attained.

For Magnus, though, this was what he wanted, a place of safety and security. There was nothing more behind it. Merian loved what he could create and had created, but Magnus he loved that he was without any other’s claim on him.

He helped Merian to bed, where he would sleep alone for the first time in thirty years.

When father and son awoke the next morning both were aware of how much emptier the house felt, a fact that each of them dealt with in quite his own way. After dressing Merian went into the kitchen and took a handful of meal from a cupboard, which he placed in a pot and mixed with water. When Adelia heard him, she came and offered to cook. Instead of accepting or relinquishing to her a place at the stove, he drove her off and continued preparing his own breakfast.

“If you don’t like my cooking you could have told me long ago,” she said. “I’ll be going back to Content’s first thing this afternoon.”

“I cooked for myself for many years,” he answered her, “until I had a wife; then I ate from my wife’s table, and only once another woman’s. You can cook for him.”

Magnus had entered the kitchen and was surprised to see his old father over the cooking fire. He had always suspected that it was the one thing in the world Merian had no idea how to do. The sight worried him, and he thought to remove him and let Adelia make breakfast. In the end he thought better of it; if things got no worse than this they would all be lucky. Adelia looked at Merian and then to Magnus for instruction, and Magnus nodded to let her know she should simply leave him to his devices for the time being.

After Merian had finished cooking his porridge, he removed himself to the dining room to eat alone. When Magnus entered the room Merian gave him an aggrieved look that let him know he wished to be left in peace that morning. Magnus turned and went back to the kitchen, where Adelia was frying eggs for his breakfast. When she brought them to him at the table, he took the plate and then called to her as she was returning to her duties.