A Long Story
"Tell her," Abe ordered gently. His tone of voice suggested to Jo that is was something the older man said regularly. Caught between them, Henry looked up at her from the picture in his hand, a sad, confused, frightened expression on his face. He turned to Abe, who nodded encouragingly. Jo subconsciously echoed the movement, eyes darting between Abe and Henry. Her partner turned back to the picture in his hand, fear and indecision warring across his face. Jo stood at a loss. What could be so bad that he feared the truth this much? Finally, he looked up, indecision gone, even if sorrow and fear still lined his face. He met her gaze evenly.
"It's a long story." The smallest of smiles graced his mouth. She'd heard that particular statement from the doctor many times before, always with a smirk or a coy glance, as though he were sharing his own private joke. But this was different. This time, she would be at last let in on the joke.
He stepped to the side, holding the door open like the gentleman he was. "Perhaps you should come in, Jo."
Jo looked over at Abe, who nodded sagely. "And sit down," he added.
Henry nodded as Jo stepped passed into the shop. He shut the door and headed for the back part of the store, where the small downstairs kitchen unit was hidden. The musty smell of old books and stained wood assailed her as she crossed the front part of the store, following Henry. Abe lingered at the door only long enough to flip the sign to closed and turn the bolt, as he always did before the groups more private conversations.
"I'll make us some tea," Henry said from the kitchenette. Jo ducked through the door into the back room with Abe only a step behind her. She slid into a chair behind the little corner table, folding her hands in her lap as she did so.
"That's okay," she said. "I'm fine."
Henry didn't budge from his post at the counter. His attention remained on his kettle, not even long enough to spare a glance her way.
Abe slid in across from Jo, putting himself between her and Henry.
"Henry," Jo began. Henry flinched and shot a quick peek in her general direction.
Abe slid his hand across the table towards her, effectively cutting her short before she could really get going. "This is really difficult for him," he said quietly. "Give him a minute." Henry returned to his work with a thankful look at Abe.
Jo sighed. After digging at her partner's secret for the better part of a year, she supposed she could wait a few more minutes. After all, Henry did make a very good pot of tea.
Abe leaned forward, dropping his voice even lower, so she had to strain to hear him. Even if he hadn't, Henry appeared to be deliberately trying to ignore them.
"He hasn't let anyone in since Ab- Abigail… since she left," Abe said. He choked up a bit at the mention of Henry's ex, which made about as much sense as Henry getting all worked up over Abe's mother.
"Was it really that bad?" Jo said, just as quiet as Abe.
"Oh, not Abigail," Abe said quickly. "Someone else, years before." Abe seemed to get lost in thought for a moment, then frowned deeply. "Self-righteous little b-"
"Nora," Henry said, suddenly appearing at Abe's shoulder, a tea tray in hand.
He set the tray down, then took the last seat at the table, between Abe and Jo. He poured the tea, adding sugar to his cup and Jo's before pouring a bit of cream in Abe's.
"Who was Nora?" Jo whispered as he handed her cup, eyes meeting Henry's gaze.
Henry took a single nervous sip before setting the cup down and turning his full attention to Jo. "She was my wife," he answered gently.
"Your wi…" Jo looked away. "I thought Abigail-"
"Nora was my first wife," Henry explained. "Abigail came along a few years later."
Jo set her tea down, choosing to meet Henry's gaze as steadily as he gave it. "The woman in the picture. With the baby… that was…?"
"Abigail," Henry replied. He took a deep breath, reached out and took both Jo's hands, clasping them as though they were a life line. "Jo, I'm going to tell you everything now. I promise. The honest to God truth, every word. All I ask is that you keep an open mind. And please refrain from calling for a room at Bellevue until I've finished." Jo smiled and huffed a soft laugh at his request before the serious mien on his face bean to register. This was no joke. The look on his face was more than serious, actually – Henry was terrified, even now.
"Albright, Henry, I promise," Jo said, nodding as she prepared herself for whatever Henry had to say.
The fear in his eyes relaxed ever so slightly, but returned quickly as he steeled himself to dive headlong into his story.
"Do you remember the case a few weeks ago, with the salvaged slave ship?" Henry's voice quavered as he spoke. He labored through each word as though it weighted a thousand pounds.
"The Empress of Africa?" Jo provided, wondering how a two hundred year old shipwreck could possibly be relevant to Henry's secret. "You took that whole thing a little too personally, if you ask me." Jo smiled, trying to lighten the mood. Once again, her attempt at levity fell flat in present company.
If anything, her humor only served to deepen Henry's worry. The space between his eyebrows shrunk alarmingly as he continued. "I suppose I neglected to mention, that the Empress happened to have been owned by the Morgan Shipping Company."
"Your family was in the slave trade." Jo surmised.
"No," Henry was quick to jump in. "Not in the least. Robert Morgan… he had his reasons, I suppose."
Abe harrumphed. "That's more credit than you've ever given him before."
"It was a point of contention," Henry agreed. He met Jo's steely gaze, something between rage and shame dancing in his eyes. She'd seen both in him before, but never with so much discord between the two. "I almost refused to see my father on his death bed."
"I'm sorry, you've lost me." Jo said. Robert Morgan. Slave trade. Henry's father? She'd gathered he was a jerk, from the one limited conversation they'd had, but what did he have to do with all of this?
"Robert Morgan was my father," Henry said. He reached into his pocket and drew out the gold and silver watch she had returned only a few minutes ago. "He gave this to me the day he died."
"Excuse me?" Jo said. Was Henry implying that…?
"A few days after the funeral, I sold my services as ship's doctor aboard the Empress of Africa for passage to America."
"Henry, this is the story you told me after the train case," Jo whispered.
"Yes, my story," Henry said. At least he was sticking to his insane story, Jo thought wryly. "Only with one glaring difference." He set the watch on the table, then began to unbutton his shirt, starting at the top and working his way down. "I wasn't on the ship when it went down." He pulled the left side of his shirt aside, revealing the ugly scar over his heart.
"Look at it, Jo," Henry ordered. "Really look. I told you I was shot. Does this look like any bullet wound you've ever seen before? Do you really think I could have survived a shot like this?"
Jo reached out, running her fingers lightly over the scar. It was rough, but still warm. It didn't feel at all like dead scar tissue, but rather living flesh contorted into an unsightly blemish. And Henry was right, on both counts. Bullet wounds were clean, crisp. Extensive tearing only occurred with point blank shots or tumbling bullets. This looked like neither. She supposed the argument could be made that it looked more like the old Civil War pictures she'd seen of musket ball injuries. And regardless, the wound was directly over Henry's heart. She could feel it pounding away beneath her hand. He should have died.
"There was a sick man," Henry continued as she went about her examination. "The captain thought it might be cholera or the gripe. It wasn't anything of the sort. Just a cold, exhaustion, and terrible living conditions. But he was a Negro, so the captain couldn't have cared less, of course. After I examined the man, the captain ordered him shot. But, of course..."
"You couldn't let that happen," Jo finished, smiling a little despite the gravity – and insanity – of the situation.
"I got myself shot for my troubles. They threw my body over board. Let me assure you, returning to life was frightening enough. Doing so in the middle of the Atlantic was absolute hell."
"Returning to life?" Jo repeated.
"I cannot die, Jo," Henry said. "Or rather, I don't remain dead for more than a few seconds. That night aboard the Empress of Africa was the first time, but it was by no means the last."
"Henry, the Empress of Africa sank in 1814," Jo said. She wasn't sure if she were arguing the point of how insane he sounded, trying to convince herself, or working through the facts. Maybe she just wanted to have this all straight in her head, for when she called the psych ward.
Henry huffed a small laugh. "I know. I've endured every intervening year since, with little to show for it besides this scar." He reached up and closed his hand over Jo's, pressing her palm against the injury.
Jo lingered for only a second, relishing his warmth, before she pulled away.
"Henry," she said. "This is nuts."
Henry didn't react like she expected. He didn't get angry or start insisting that he could prove it or that she just didn't understand. He instead rocked back in his chair, his face grim, betrayed, and scared, and started buttoning up his shirt.
"Henry." She reached out, but he moved before she touched him, turning away. He looked for all the world like he wanted to run. He almost did, standing up and moving across the room to the kitchenette. He leaned against the counter for several seconds, looking down at the stained wood surface. Jo glanced across the table at Abe, uncertain of how to proceed. Surprisingly, Abe seemed to be glowering at her, though there was a sort of kind understanding in his gaze.
"That's what Nora said," Abe hissed reproachfully. Jo wondered if he actually believed this malarkey, or if he just played along to keep Henry stable.
Henry breathed a little sigh, drawing her attention back to him. "Skinny dipping," he muttered. He turned around, facing the two of them, leaning against the counter with his hands braced, white-knuckled, on the edge.
"Jo," he said. He still looked like he was ready to bolt, but at least he was still meeting her gaze. "Whenever I die, I always disappear, in an instant. A few seconds later, I reappear, naked, in the nearest large body of water. Lately, it's been the East River." Well, taking his penchant for wandering around naked, it made a fair amount of sense; to a delusional mind, that is. "That's what happened down in the subway station this afternoon. You followed me and Adam down there. Adam shot me knowing that you would hear and come to investigate. I disappeared before arrived, leaving only my watch behind. Didn't you wonder where I could have gone in such a short amount of time?"
Jo nodded. She had wondered, when she found the watch, and even more so when the picture on the ground a few feet away turned up. And there had been two shots fired – louder and fuller than a normal gunshot, but still.
"Who's Adam?"
Henry sighed. "Adam is not important right now. For the moment, you cannot accept the truth of my own immortality, so there is no conceivable reason you would accept an explanation of Adam."
"Immortality," Jo repeated cautiously.
Henry nodded, then proceeded to tell his tale, continuing from the moment he was picked up off the coast of Florida by a passing Spanish ship. True to his word, it was a long story. At times, he was extreme in his details, sometimes going so far as to describe a smell or a color. But in other places, she got the impression he was glossing over painful parts, and he would often skip whole decades. She could only assume nothing of note had occurred in that time, or else something particularly hard. That was, of course, assuming he wasn't off-the-wall crazy. She still hadn't ruled it out.
As he told his story, he began to pace around, starting with little more than a step or two in either direction, gradually building up to the little five-foot circles he tended to do when explaining his theory on their most recent murder case. After a few quick, almost obligatory mentions of Nora and a hospital he'd worked at for some time, he skipped ahead – almost a full century if she had to guess. He hurried his way through both World Wars, barely hitting on a few major battles he'd been a part of. He seemed to get a little lost at the merest mention of the Somme, and more than a tad sick. As he neared the end of the second War, he finally sat back down. Abe reached out and took his hand. Henry clung to the older man – well, older-looking, at least – and groped for the picture on the table.
He found it beside Jo's cup of tea. Henry, the blonde woman he'd identified as Abigail, and the little baby, all clad in the style of the late 1940s. And the image was certainly old. It had that worn, faded feel old pictures always did. Henry stared down at the picture as he spoke.
"April 15, 1945," he said. "The Germans had agreed to surrender Bergen-Belsen Camp without a fight. It was a cesspool, and they wanted to be free of it. We moved in that afternoon, to help as best we could, get the people out of there, into better facilities, save whoever possible. A lot of the prisoners were Auschwitz transfers." Henry looked up at Abe, fighting to smile, despite the pain evident in his features. Facing the reality of a nightmare like the Holocaust was difficult enough for most people. But for someone with as big a heart as Henry's … she couldn't comprehend it. And if he were really there…
He looked back down at the image in his hand, silent. Tears fell down his cheeks. Sorrow, rage, pain, fear; it all warred across his face. Jo didn't know what to say or do, so she settled for covering her hand over Abe's and Henry's. Feeling the quiver of pent-up emotion in Henry's shaking fist, even through Abe's steadying grip, Jo finally understood. Only pain incomprehensible, built on real memories and years of experience, could generate such feeling. Feeling that was always buried deep and hidden from the world. Even now, Henry was trying to hide the pain. And he was failing miserably, having kept it all buried so deep for so long. Letting everything come so close to the surface all at once, it was straining him almost to his breaking point.
She believed.
Before she could voice the thought, could assure him that he didn't need to go any further simply to satisfy her own curiosity, Henry spoke. "I should never have gone up to her."
"You don't say that," Abe admonished. "Don't even think it. She was the best thing that ever happened to you. And she made her own choices too. Don't you dare cheapen that by blaming yourself for what happened. It was Adam, dad. Not you."
Jo blinked. Dad?
She vaguely remembered seeing the name on the business license for the shop, back when Henry had been the suspect in the train case, and they'd executed a warrant for his home. Abraham Morgan.
Abe was the baby in the picture.
And if Abe was the baby, and the woman was… "Oh, God," Jo breathed. They'd just found the long-dead bones of Abe's mother, of Henry's wife, of Abigail.
No wonder Henry could barely keep it together. She gave his and Abe's hands a reassuring squeeze.
Jo was at a loss. Despite not wanting to push Henry any further, to hurt him by making him relive all this again, she was now desperately curious. It might be right to ask Henry to stop, to at least take a break, but she found she couldn't. She was enthralled by the two-hundred thirty-five year old man before her and his equally long story.
Henry looked up at Jo when she gave his hand a second squeeze. She smiled, prompting the first real smile he'd given her all day. In an instant, she watched the fear bleed from his gaze. The sorrow and anger were still there, but the fear was gone.
"You believe me," he said, sounding like a man in the desert who had just discovered an oasis. She supposed that was exactly how it must feel to him.
"Yes." Jo smiled again. "I believe you."
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