Awakened by the chill of his absence, Beverly squinted in the grey pre-dawn, her eyes eventually making out his form by the terrace doors.
"Jean-Luc?"
"I'm fine, Beverly."
"Fine" is what he had not been for many weeks.
She knew that he'd been working himself up to tell her something. He had been on the verge of doing so many times on board Enterprise.
For one reason or another, he had not.
That here in their holiday hideaway, he was still struggling to find the right moment, was not a matter of frustration for her, because in this one thing she held the advantage.
Beverly knew what that something was.
Time will say nothing but I told you so
Time only knows the price we have to pay;
If I could tell you I would let you know.
Rising from their bed, Beverly drew her grandmother's shawl about her. Coming up behind him, she laid her chin upon his shoulder and wrapped her arms around his waist.
Jean-Luc responded by raising her hands to his, holding them tightly clasped to his chest.
The first rays of the sun were breaking weakly across the sky.
If we should weep when clowns put on their show,
If we should stumble when musicians play,
Time will say nothing but I told you so.
There was a skiff upon the sea.
"Heading out?" she asked.
"Yes."
Together, they watched as the main sail was hauled up the rigging and the boat tacked its way across the still dark bay towards the horizon, in audience to the lone welcoming party to the rising star.
"There are no fortunes to be told, although,
Because I love you more than I can say,
If I could tell you I would let you know."
...she whispered.
Verse wasn't Beverly's forte, as Jean-Luc well knew and neither the once-renowned fame of its author nor the fact of its composition in the dusk of a dying empire, were sufficient reasons for it to be in her mind's eye.
Jean-Luc gasped and made to move away, but she drew him back, shifting so as to now capture his hands in hers, enveloping him in her arms.
"Don't be afraid," Beverly said, her breath warm against his skin.
In the twenty-five years since she had first read this poem and the letter in which it was contained, hand-written on the finest of paper, Beverly had learned a great deal about the man who had copied it so carefully for Jack.
"How...?" Jean-Luc eventually asked.
The letter with its poem had not been among the personal effects Jean-Luc had returned to Beverly with Jack's body.
Those remains had contained the eclectic contents of Jack's cabin aboard the USS Stargazer; holograms and personal correspondence; momentoes of star systems visited and planets frequented; a crimson sweater she had knitted the year they got engaged that he favoured when off-duty; a dress uniform; a wedding ring; ridiculous fluffy slippers Walker Keel made Jack wear to the 2351 Admirals' Ball - the price of a lost wager - that he had inexplicably grown to adore...
All of Jack's space-faring possessions packed and presented to her ship-shape and in Bristol fashion.
Unlike his body.
The winds must come from somewhere when they blow,
There must be reasons why the leaves decay;
Time will say nothing but I told you so.
Her husband had been in the ground eighteen months when Beverly received a Starfleet package containing the last duty uniform Jack had worn, a hand-written letter in beautiful script and a message from the Stargazer's Chief Medical Officer.
In his message, Dr Greyhorse explained that Jack had encased the letter to preserve it and that it had been found tucked into the uniform he'd discarded in the ship's airlock on the day he died. Beverly had been told Jack died during an EVA, wearing a containment suit.
Dr Greyhorse provided no explanation for the delay in sending these items to Lt. Commander Crusher's widow.
The letter addressed to Jack was dated six years earlier - the year Beverly married Jack, a few months before Wesley was born.
It was from Jean-Luc.
Beverly had had so many questions to ask but Jack was dead and Jean-Luc might as well have been for the distance he put between them, always so far away, one deep space mission after another.
She had thought he was her friend too.
Perhaps the roses really want to grow,
The vision seriously intends to stay;
If I could tell you I would let you know.
In the months following Jack's funeral, his mother had tried her best to console Beverly and once – only once- intimated at something about Jack and the Captain.
But neither were by nature or inclination women's women and as Beverly had never been close to Caroline when Jack was alive, she saw no reason to confide in her mother-in-law because Jack was dead.
So it was with mutual relief that communications between them peetered out and eventually ceased entirely.
Only once had Beverly ever spoken of the letter and the poem and only then to shut down Walker's challenge to her motivation in applying for the position of CMO on the newly-commissioned Enterprise-D.
Walker was in no position to lecture her about motives she had told him.
Caroline Crusher was long gone.
Walker was dead.
Beverly had never confided in Deanna.
"Come back to bed," Beverly said to Jean-Luc, as the skiff's blue trimmings glowed fiercely in the morning's light.
It was a strange comfort she drew from this poem Jean-Luc had taken such care in choosing.
In the letter that he had written to Jack.
That Jack had preserved and kept close to his heart till the day he died.
That Beverly now carried with her always.
Suppose the lions all get up and go,
And all the brooks and soldiers run away;
Will Time say nothing but I told you so?
If I could tell you I would let you know.
Later, when they awoke, Beverly and Jean-Luc would discuss everything.
Poem by W.H. Auden (If I Could Tell You)