Now I am returning to the one place that I have ever felt free, the one place that I feel I can call home, as strange as that may seem, for I only lived there a few short weeks when I was a child. In some ways all my experiences there seem like a dream, and at the same time, feel more real to me than anything else in this life. Yet do not despair, my son: this way, we will both be free.

Even though I am not there, I will always be with you. Think of your dear mother, but only in the quiet spaces, when you are alone and away from the burdens of who you must be, from now on, and how you must present yourself to the world. Think of me when your heart is sore and the world seems cruel. And think of me when your heart is full, too—for I will be there with you in your joy. And even though you must never tell a soul who your mother is, remember always who you truly are, at those times when you are able to be exactly your own wonderful, beautiful self.

With love great enough to fill an ocean,

M.

I carefully fold the old, yellowed paper and take it with me. Whatever became of Meriday? What happened to her when she went back to the swamp? Did she find her own mother?

I slip the letter between the pages of the notebook in which I’ve written down all my notes about Meriday, Jonah, Clementine, and the Wakefields of that time. Another artifact to add to the puzzle—the last one, perhaps. The end of their story, even if it ends in a question mark.

Poor Lucius, I think. For, despite all his good fortune and the depth of his mother’s love, he still had to grow up with August Wakefield for a father.

Winter in Virginia is never what you expect it will be.

Up in the Blue Ridge and Appalachian mountains, you could be freezing to death in a snowed-in cabin, but closer to the coast, the ocean keeps our winters typically mild, save a nor’easter or two. Things get quiet in winter, as if the blanket of snow has muffled all living beings; the insects hush, and the lonely wind blows through dead trees. Winter is a time for the quiet—for aloof wind and soft flakes and the low crackle of flames in the fireplace, and the quiet shadows they cast on the walls, shadows that cavort silently behind you.

In our childhood winter days, Elizabeth used to bury me in snow the way you’d bury someone in sand at the beach, packing it up to my neck until I couldn’t move. Once, she left me there for half an hour, and when I came inside my lips were blue and my mother scorched my throat with hot tea.

In a winter like this one, even the primordial swamp crystallizes with the cold. But in all my life, to tell the truth, I can’t remember a winter quite like this one.