Made myself a promise once. Twice. Three times even. But I broke that promise the second I met Matthew Cromwell. Because I was nineteen-years-old and so very much in love.

When I was a little girl I was so determined to be independent. To be my own person. Being the youngest of three I found it hard to be just that. My brothers were nine and seven when I was born. I was sort of an unexpected little miracle. Brothers never imagined they'd have a little sister to boss around-- or more accurately, boss them around. Even before I could talk or walk, I was running the house. I liked to be in control, and I liked having that power, which was given to me so freely.

My dad was a school teacher. He married my mom only three months after he met her. Said he would never meet anyone like her again so he had to claim her while he could. My mum had been a social worker. Mum loved to tell us the story of how dad had embarrassed himself to catch her attention. She had laughed so hard, she told us, that she had craft coming out of her nose. It was the sort of story that became more and more theatrical the more they told it. 

The owned a farm just outside of the city. We were between the water and the lights, secluded in a little valley where my dad raised Greyhounds. He wasn't a hunter nor was he a racer; but he loved his Greyhounds and their training was among the few things he was genuinely proud of in his life. I've probably had over thirty Greyhounds in my lifetime, and that doesn't include the ones he has now or the ones he bred after I moved out.

I love my dad; but it was my mum that I had clung to so early on in life. My brother's were rather independent, and rallied behind my dad. Dad took 'em hunting and taught them the trade, trained them how to breed and train Greyhounds. Not that he hadn't tried with me; it was more that I hadn't tried with him. I hated structure and I hated being told what to do. That was something my dad and I had in common. 

When my mum died, things changed. I was fourteen when she was killed in a hit-and-run. My eldest brother, Alex, left the house. He was nineteen. He got married early and moved to Germany with his American wife. He didn't talk much to us after that. Even less with me. I don't think he could stand to look at me... because I looked so much like mum. I get a card on my birthday and during the holidays. But. Jake, then, was sixteen. He takes care of my dad now. Still hasn't been married, but at least he's moved out of the house.

And then my dad.... well it broke him when mum died. He still talks about her as if she's here... just hiding. He'll always be waiting for her. I never wanted to ended up like that... I never wanted to be pining for the dead, or what was lost. I never wanted to be so in love or dependent on another human being that I faded away without them. I promised myself after my mum died that I'd never end up like them. Like the lonely. I'd make my own peace with love and life, and find somewhere to be.... where I'd never have to feel that pain again. 


So.... that promise then.

First boy I ever fancied was called Richard. Never could remember his last name, but I let him... take all of me. Not sure if it was because my mum had just died the year before we met or because I had never been with a boy before, maybe both. but I kissed him once and never stopped. He was my first everything: first kiss, first boyfriend to meet my dad and my brothers (guess which was scarier?), first boy to make my stomach burn, first boyfriend to take my clothes off...

I liked him. I liked him a lot. Then one night after he dropped me off back at home he confessed that he loved me, and I couldn't say it back. I just kissed him and watched him drive off. I called his mum the next morning and told her that I was dumping her son and to give him the message. He tried to stop me at school; but when I pretended he wasn't there he stopped trying. He never talked to me again, and I never wanted to see him again.

I spent the rest of secondary school sticking with my single living. I took time off after I had graduated and helped my dad sell the house so he could move closer to Jake in the city. Mammy, our grandmother, moved in with him once grandad had died. Don't think my dad ever imagined he'd be living with his mum again; but it was good to see him in company once again. Even if it was just Mammy and her peasant pies.

I started at university when I was seventeen. During my second year there I had to take a class called The Laws of Physics and it's Relation to an Imaginary World. It centred around the impossible-- and how to make it possible. I hated that class. The teacher was old and boring, and I don't think he believed a single word of what he said. He died halfway through the semester and the class was taken over by a renowned genius, who also happened to be the only son of millionaire inventor: Howard Cromwell.

His son was 'Matthew James Cromwell'. He was a clumsy idiot, but wickedly clever and smarter than any tenure professor at the institution. Matthew was twenty-seven. I was nineteen. And I fell for that goofy charm and that sensitive, damaged sort of type.

Matthew found me under the tree in the courtyard. I had been so distracted by something or another, and I missed the root of the tree under my foot. I tripped and fell, twisting my ankle and scratching the hell out of my thigh. He brought me back to his office, put a bandage over the scrap and left his hand on my thigh just a second longer than he had to. I tried to kiss him and he got so flustered that he ended up knocking over an entire shelf of books and knickknacks.

"I meant to do that," he would always say; and I'd laugh, because I knew he was lying. I fell in love with him... and after our first date, I know he fell in love with me too. I was only nineteen... and Matthew had a son. A son that I would meet only a few weeks after dating, and a son that would grossly mistake me for a nanny or maid every time I would come to visit. I love him, nonetheless. 

Matthew was hard to figure out at first. He was a very private person. He never really shared any bits of his history with me. But he was fun and he showed me things that I didn't even know were possible. It was different with him than it had been with Richard. He looked at me, and I swear the way he looked at me, was unmatched in any love story ever told or heard or seen. Because when he looked at me, I felt myself melting. Like his gaze was burning... burning for me.

Funny, because I was always the one to push him first. I held his hand, first. I suggested a second date, first. I kissed him, first. And I was the first to initiate... other activities. First. Except. It was Matthew that told me he loved me.  I should've run. I would have had it been anyone else; but it wasn't just anyone it was someone... I loved. So I said it back, and I had sex with him on the table in his kitchen. I woke up the next morning in his bed, wandered down the stairs in a sheet... met his mother for the first time. She mistook me for a prostitute. She's quite fond of me now.

Matthew wanted to be an inventor, a writer, an engineer, a father, and a husband. He was brilliant at... everything, and he wanted it all. He was starting a career, getting a doctorate, and being a father and a boyfriend. I found myself spending less time at home, and moving my stuff slowly into his. I played mum to his four-year-old son, and had afternoon tea with his mother on the weekends. I was nineteen years old and I was about to be a mother...

I never met Oscar's mother. She didn't take an interest in her son; Matthew hadn't heard from her since their son was born. Matthew's family liked me because I was young and good with his son. They liked me because I was smart and rational so I could keep Matthew in check. My family, however...

The first time I introduced my dad to Matthew was the same night I had to tell my father that he was going to be a grandfather. I was five weeks pregnant. I got sick on the kitchen floor and Oscar had taken out a pregnancy test he had dug out of the trash and showed it to my dad.

My dad would've hit Matthew had Oscar not been there to witness it. My brothers drove to the house that same night and sat down with Matthew for almost two hours before we were finally allowed to go home. Matthew never did tell me what happened behind those closed doors while I rocked his four-year-old son to sleep.

Even if my family did hate Matthew, that didn't stop them from doting all over our daughter: Olivia. My dad was a terrible father-in-law, but a fantastic grandfather to Olivia... and to Oscar. The children would spend weekends with him in the city and go on week-long trips when Matthew and I needed the quiet time to study or... other things.

Matthew made sure I could stay in school. Once I had recovered and able to return to school, Matthew took Olivia and Oscar all on his own. My dad and Matthew had them most of the time. I hadn't spent any time with the kids at all until school was over, which wasn't until Oscar had started primary school. He and I got to drive to school together when I was getting my student teaching at the same institution as he was. 

Once Olivia started school, it became harder to maintain that balance. It was one of the hardest times in our life, because while I had a stable position at the Hill Secondary School, Matthew was bouncing between projects. He had dreams of becoming someone... and that often eclipsed other opportunities he could've easily taken. He didn't want to be a school teacher again. He refused to go back to teaching. Stubborn man, he was. He insisted on making things, creating the impossible, and writing about it. He went back to get his doctorate in psychology and then considered medical training. He could never sit still.

If I'm being honest, I think that he didn't want to give up being a stay-at-home dad. Matthew had money. He always had money. I wanted to work because I refused to stay at home and wait for the time to tick on. Matthew was on one project and then the next, so it wasn't unusual for him to come home late or not come home at all, not until the next morning. He said he'd found something incredible and he'd take me to discover it the next day. It was who he was. So I never thought...

Matthew was always on the edge of an adventure, but he was tethered to his responsibilities: me, Olivia, Oscar... He had to be out and about and no matter what was happening at home, there was something 'awesome' happening on the other side of town. It wasn't unusual for him to skip out after dinner to see something-- if it was worth it, he'd come back and take us to see it, too. But that one night. He had gotten a call from some uncle he never talked to. Told me he'd be back later... kissed me goodbye, and then disappeared into the streets.

He never came back.

After two months of fighting with Matthew's mother over custody of Oscar, I finally took control of what had happened. No one in Matthew's family knew what had happened. An investigation led us to one hopeless lead after another. Just a few weeks after I had gained custody over Oscar, I received a letter from Matthew's mother about the same uncle that had stolen Matthew away the night he went missing. It sent us deeper south... when we got to the uncle's he was dead. But Matthew had been there... and I figured out where he was going next.

His ancestral treasure home... The house in America that no one talked about: The Ramsay House.