The Keeper of Happy Endings

by Barbara Davis

“We’re all a collection of our stories, chérie. Our joys and sorrows. Our loves and losses. That is who we are, a tally of all our agonies and ecstasies. Sometimes the agonies leave a mark, like a bruise on the soul. We do our best to hide them from the world, and from ourselves too. Because we’re afraid of being fragile. Of being damaged. That’s what makes us kindred spirits, Rory—our bruises.”

To ensure a happy ending, a bride must be willing to give her whole heart to the man she marries. Her spine, however, must at all times remain her own.

There are times for holding on in this life and times for letting go. You must learn to know the difference.

“How a person behaves toward us is never about us, Rory. It’s about them.

“In France we say, tu me manques. It means ‘you are missing from me.’ Not I miss you—the way Americans say it—but you are missing from me. The part of you that is a part of me . . . is gone. This is how it is for her. There’s a void in her life where you used to be, and she doesn’t know how to fill it.”

There is a grief worse than death. It is the grief of a life half-lived. Not because you don’t know what could have been but because you do.

Lovers wound one another for many reasons, but in the end, fear is always at the root of it. It’s a hard thing, perhaps the hardest of all, to trust when we’re afraid—to open ourselves to the risk of forgiveness. But forgiveness is the greatest magick of all.