June, Reimagined (83)

Lennox wasn’t just June’s person. He was her destination, her anchor.

“Can we go home now?” he asked.

But June was already home with him. Wherever they went, as long as they were together, that place would simply be the next setting in their love story.





EPILOGUE


The February evening was cold and cloudy as Nancy, Phil, and June waited on the hill overlooking the crowd gathered for Up Helly Aa. June felt more nervous this year. She pulled a flask from her pocket and took a sip of whisky. Then she handed it to her parents, who drank without hesitation.

Nancy and Phil had arrived in the Highlands two days ago and were staying at the newly remodeled inn, now an artists’ retreat center and residency under the new name the Art of Living. When David and Eva had approached Lennox and Amelia about the venture soon after the fire, the Gordon siblings had gladly handed the property over to new management. Now booked through the summer, the inn hosted artists who came to Knockmoral to join some of the best most-fucking-brilliant nobodies from around the globe.

When Phil Merriweather heard about the residency, he immediately applied. Josh’s bedroom now contained an easel in the corner by the window, Phil’s canvases stacked against the wall, surrounded by buckets and bins full of paints and brushes. Nancy had indeed been right: they opened the room up for change, and it had taken seed in the form of Phil’s art. He had packed more brushes and paint than clothes for his two-week stay at the Art of Living.

One month after the fire, Amelia left for Thailand on a one-way ticket. Last June, when Lennox had heard from her, she was staying with monks at a Buddhist monastery in Chiang Rai, with no intention of coming home soon.

And last night at Anderson’s Pub, with everyone gathered for music—a new Thursday tradition started by a group of local musicians, including Lennox—Angus had surprised them all with an announcement of his own. He came trudging through the pub wearing shorts, a tank top, and mala beads and lugging a large backpack.

“Yoga retreat?” David asked.

“Fuck off.” Angus stood at the table, panting. “I can’t take it anymore. I’m going after her.”

“Are you sure you want to do that, mate?” Lennox said as he tuned his guitar. “Amelia said that if you followed her, she’d kick you in the balls until they turned purple.”

“Better than the blue balls I have every night, now that she’s gone.”

“Mom and Dad,” June said with a blush. “This is Angus.”

“It’s best to ignore him,” David whispered across the table.

Angus picked up David’s half-drunk pint and downed the contents. “That bloody woman cursed me. I haven’t been able to shag a single girl since she left. She took my penis with her, and I want it back. I just came to say goodbye.”

“Do you even know where Chiang Rai is?” Eva asked.

“No, but I’ll find her,” Angus said confidently. He took Phil’s beer from his hands and finished it, then smacked June’s father on the back. “Cheers, mate. Wish me luck.”

And with that, Angus MacGowan left for Thailand in search of Amelia Gordon.

“He’s a dead man,” Lennox stated. “No way he survives.”

“I’ll toast to that,” David said happily.

But Eva had a glint in her eye that June had seen before. “I know that look,” June said. “No more plot twists.”

“It’s not that . . .” Eva pondered. “I hadn’t considered a sequel before, but I think this story might just have one.”

“Amelia and Angus?” Lennox asked. “Are you planning a horror story? Because Amelia will kill him if he ever finds her.”

Eva smiled. “We’ll have to wait and see, won’t we?”

Now a night later, at the Up Helly Aa celebration, the wind picked up, carrying the smell of fire and a cold that burned June’s cheeks. After this night, June and Lennox would take the train down to Edinburgh to deliver more pictures to Ronan’s gallery in Leith. Since her work had sold well the prior summer, Ronan had offered June another spot, in his winter exhibit. Her wedding photography was picking up as well, as word got around by way of Ivan’s gushing praise of her work.

“Here they come,” Phil said, pointing to the flames emerging around the corner.

“I hope this works,” Nancy said.

“Don’t worry. Hamish is the Guizer Jarl. He promised me it would be OK,” June said. “Lennox put the urn in the galley himself. No one will find him.”

The tacky football urn had been swapped out months ago for a simple wooden box that Phil and Nancy had brought with them to Scotland. On its top, the words To thine own self be true were written in pyrography.

The procession wove through town, torches glowing. The Merriweathers stood, arms wrapped around each other, watching the spectacle that just one year earlier had been foreign to them all. But the beautiful agony of life is in the unexpected turn, the unforeseen swerve that leads a person with an urn to an airport, where she buys a one-way ticket to her future.

“It’s remarkable,” Nancy said. “Josh would have loved this.”

June hugged her parents close as the costumed men circled the galley. Soon the boat was engulfed in flames, glowing brighter and brighter. And as the men began to sing “The Norseman’s Home,” June smiled upward at the stars, lifted her whisky, and said, “Now, this is something to remember.”