Elizabeth sat on the front steps of the school house, her head pressed against the wooden railing. She closed her eyes, hoping the blockage of the sunlight would lessen her now significant headache. This had been one of the most draining days she'd ever experienced. Why did she agree to play baseball this afternoon? What a terrible idea that had been! Why did Lucas and Nathan have to overhear every single embarrassing thought or memory she'd articulated in the last month? If she'd ever agreed to begin courting with either of them, she obviously knew she'd need to discuss her father and his objections to her lifestyle, but she certainly wouldn't have wanted that conversation to initiate in this manner. Why did Tom always seem to choose such inopportune times to slip? And why had she never had a calm, candid conversation with Jack about Tom's history with vice and what he'd done to help him reset his younger brother's life? Elizabeth focused on her breath, silently wishing Jack were there, sitting next to her, assuring her that everything would be alright and that he'd figure out how to get Tom on a better path. Instead, she heard the unmistakable sound of tires crunching against the gravel outside the school and open her eyes as Lucas rolled up in his car.

She watched as he gracefully stepped out of the vehicle and tried to push away her errant thoughts of how handsome he looked in his dark suit as he ambled over and sat next to her on the stairs, asking gently, "You feeling any better?"

"Yes," she exhaled, looking away from him. "I think so. Though that certainly was one of the most unbearably awkward conversations I've ever had someone overhear. I am absolutely mortified."

She felt his warm smile as he replied, "You've got nothing to be embarrassed over. I suppose Nathan and I should have left when you asked us to. We were both just concerned, Elizabeth. Tom was quite angered."

"I know," she sighed. "I just wish you hadn't heard all that: today, back then. I'm not sure I'll be able to really look either of you in the face again after all this."

Lucas replied quietly, "Well that'd make me immeasurably sad if it were the case. I'd miss seeing your sparkling blue eyes."

She held her breath at his tender comment. He was giving her butterflies again. He was so good at doing that. Often enthralling and captivating, she knew she needed to keep them at bay, now more than ever as she had so many thoughts she needed to sort through before she could even consider letting him feel her mind was certain of him. "Lucas, I," she stammered.

"It's just a compliment," he smiled kindly. "We're still friends, I hope."

She smiled and nodded, "Yes. I hope so too. I just."

He nodded sadly, "I know you're struggling right now. And that's okay. I told you before, I'd wait as long as necessary."

"You did," she exhaled. "But it feels unfair to you for me to.."

He cut her off, "Let me be the judge of what's fair to me, alright?"

They sat in silence for a moment as Elizabeth pondered what she really wanted to say to him. What if I can't stay here? What if I can never feel safer here again? What if I figure out my conflicted thoughts about Nathan were actually a sign that I should be with him instead? What if I can't learn to love you as much as I did Jack? What if I ended up loving you more and that tore my memories of him apart? What if my initial concerns, and those of some people around here, that you might not be trustworthy were correct? What kind of life exactly did you envision living? And does it match with what I want? What do I even want anymore? What if you couldn't love my son as your own? What will my parents say about all of this? How will I explain to Daddy that I'm rejecting his demands, again?

Interrupting her thoughts, Lucas added, "I've missed you immensely these last couple weeks. I want to be your friend right now, and if I can be bold enough to state it, it seems you may need one. I've been worried. Please, let me help. Just talk to me."

"Okay," she agreed, knowing should couldn't share the majority of the thoughts on her mind, but resolving to at least share a few. Looking back at Tom, recalling this recent conversation he'd overheard, she sighed, "You must have questions now though."

He shook his head slightly, "None you have to answer, and certainly not now."

She nodded, then added, appreciative of the space he was affording her, "Thank you."

He smiled, then changed the topic, stating merrily, "You know, given my business practice, I do have some experience dealing with this sort of thing."

"Of course you do," she exhaled, wondering why she hadn't assumed that, pondering exactly how much experience with men like this he might have had. "But I couldn't ask…"

"You didn't," he smiled. "I'm offering."

"Okay," she sighed, knowing this probably was something she could ask of him, even if she felt somewhat shamed even having to do it.

"I'll see if I can wake him enough so I can help him to the car," he smiled, standing. He held his arm out to her and helped her stand, carefully placing his other underneath her elbow. "Alright?" he asked.

She nodded, thinking once again, how she always felt more than alright in his company, even when that was sometimes far from the truth. She knew she was over her head at the moment: with her emotions, her memories, her fears, with Tom. Yet watching Lucas as he somewhat struggled to rouse Tom and guide him over to the car, Elizabeth felt her heart unexpectedly lighten. He may not have said it, but she realized that Lucas loved her, because he showed her that constantly, with how he cared for her as well as the people that mattered to her. She was beginning to think that she loved him as well, a thought both exciting and foreboding.

Elizabeth had been quiet on the quick drive from school to her house. Lucas was used to having carefree, easy banter with her and he missed that, but he understood she had a lot on her heart and mind, so the silence did not bother him. He was simply grateful to be in her company again.

Lucas had managed to wake Tom and help him into Elizabeth's home, up the stairs, to the guest bedroom, where the young man had promptly fallen back asleep in the bed, snoring loudly. Lucas ambled back down the stairs and smiled at Elizabeth, who was playing with little Jack on the sofa, having dismissed Laura for the night. She saw him approach and remarked, sincerely, "Lucas, thank you for helping me with him. I know I wouldn't have been able to manage that."

"It was no problem," he smiled.

She looked slightly uncomfortable as she asked, "Do you want to stay for a bit? For dinner maybe? I can't believe you brought all that food," she motioned towards the prepared meals he'd brought over from the saloon, enough to last a few days. He wanted to make sure she was eating.

He shrugged, "I figured you've probably been a bit too tired to cook."

She laughed slightly, "Well you figured correctly. I've been feeding Jack baked beans for three days now."

He gave her another of his sad smiles, his heart getting heavy again, and asked sincerely, "Elizabeth, I want to help. Can you tell me how? Do you want to talk?"

Her eyes welled up as she replied, "I don't know if I can, particularly not right now. My head hurts rather fiercely and this day…"

He smiled, "it's certainly been a lot." She nodded, wiping a tear away. "Are you sure you don't want to see Carson? I could take you."

She shook her head, "It should go away by the morning. It usually does after I sleep."

He looked at Jack then back up at her and smiled, "Then let me watch this little guy for awhile so you can take a nap or just go to bed early."

"Oh Lucas," she exhaled. "I couldn't possibly."

He shook his head, "You could. And I do rather insist. You mentioned you haven't been sleeping well."

"Yes, but.."

"Please," he insisted. "I can at least do this for you. Let me. We will be fine."

"Don't you have work to do?" she fretted.

"Nothing that can't wait a few hours," he replied. He was actually extremely busy between the saloon and oil company now, but he knew he'd much rather lose a few hours of sleep tonight staying up to finish his work if it meant she was able to get some sleep herself.

After another brief exchange and the giving of a few (unneeded) instructions, she finally agreed to let him watch Jack for the afternoon. As she ascended the stairs, Lucas picked him and remarked, "I have really missed you, little man. I haven't found anyone else to play trucks with. Should we play trucks? Wait, that might be noisy for your mama. How about we read some books? Where are your books?"

"Ooks!" Jack squealed.

Lucas smiled at him, "Yes! I know you love books." He picked up one his own childhood favorites: Puss in Boots.

"Me-ow!" Jack smiled.

Lucas laughed, "Yes, that's right! Cats say meow! You are such a smart little boy, you know that?"

Just as Lucas was finishing a third book, someone knocked softly on the front door. He rose quickly, holding Jack, lest the noise wake Elizabeth, or Tom. Rosemary was startled to see him standing there holding little Jack. "Oh my, Lucas," she stuttered.

Lucas smiled, "Hello, Rosemary. Elizabeth's upstairs napping."

"Oh?" she replied. "How odd."

"As is Tom," he added, not wanting Rosemary to think anything improper was going on.

"Wait. Tom? As in Tom Thorton?" she questioned. He nodded. "Tom's here?" she asked with shock.

He nodded again, opening the door for her to come in, "He showed up after school in a bit of a state."

Rosemary gasped, "Oh no! Not again. Poor Elizabeth. Did the children see him?"

"No, no. They'd already left. Nathan and I were the only ones there."

"You and Nathan were there?" she marveled. "How did that come to be?"

"Well we'd both gone to talk to her; turns out she's been avoiding both of us."

"Well yes I certainly know that," Rosemary grumbled. Lucas smiled softly, glad Elizabeth wasn't keeping all her friends away from her internal thoughts. "What terrible timing for this. He always has the most terrible timing for everything, that one! Was he quite uncouth?"

Lucas rose his eyebrows, "You could say that."

"He probably got her all frazzled, didn't he?" she asked, knowingly.

Lucas nodded, "He certainly did."

"Well what did he say? Why is he here?"

Lucas answered, baffled and wanting to ensure he honored his promise to Elizabeth not to say anything out of turn about their encounter, "I'm not entirely sure, but it seemed like he needed closure. That he wanted to meet little Jack and visit Jack's grave and, well, Elizabeth thinks he needs help."

Rosemary rolled her eyes, "Well I'm sure he does! He's always in need of help in one form or another. So selfish he'd just show up here when he's the one in need of help, after all those months of her asking him to come meet his nephew!"

Lucas swallowed, "He quite upset her, Rosemary."

"Well he has a certain way of doing that to people," she retorted, huffily. It was obvious Rosemary was not a big fan of his.

"Yes, but he, well he implied that Elizabeth is at fault for Jack's death," Lucas noted, wanting her to, at least, know about that bit of the conversation.

"What?" she gasped. Lucas nodded. "Well that is just absurd!"

"He suggested Jack would've left the Mounties if she'd asked," Lucas explained. He wondered if there were any merit to that assumption.

"Preposterous!" Rosemary fumed.

"That if he really loved her, he'd have put her and little Jack first," Lucas pressed, wanting Rosemary to know exactly what frame of mind her dear friend was in.

"Oh, that man! How could he? Oh that makes me so furious! Jack loved her fiercely; he was an exceptionally good man, always, in every aspect of his life. They were so very different those two. Tom's never known the meaning of honor or devotion or duty. Oh my! That man just makes me so livid! She doesn't deserve that one bit!"

Lucas smiled sadly, "I agree, but I'm fearful she may have taken some of his comments to heart. He repeatedly said that she should have made Jack leave the Mounted Police because he'd apparently not intended to marry, or didn't want his children to lose their father, like he had."

Rosemary waived her hand, "Well of course he didn't. That was his greatest fear in this life: was subjecting a wife or his children to the life he and Tom and their mother had. But there is no comparison! Elizabeth has a secure job and can provide easily for little Jack. And she is a wonderful mother: involved, warm, loving. Now I don't mean to say Charlotte isn't, but not all women have that natural maternal instinct, you know?" Yes, that is certainly true, Lucas agreed. "But she didn't exactly provide stability, like all children need. She left those boys far too much on their own! Tom was constantly getting into scrapes of one sort or another and poor Jack just had the weight of the entire family on his little shoulders. Too much responsibility for a young boy. But Elizabeth certainly wouldn't do anything like that to this little man, would she?" she cooed at Jack. "No, she wouldn't because she just loves you so much. Just like Auntie Ro Ro. Yes, you want to come to me, don't you?" She held her arms out to him, taking him from Lucas.

Lucas cleared his throat, "Rosemary, I'm really worried about her."

"Yes, I know," she exhaled. "I am too."

"Did she tell you she's considering leaving Hope Valley?" he asked, trying to keep his voice steady.

"Yes, we've discussed it some. She doesn't feel safe here anymore, Lucas," Rosemary shrugged. "And I, for one, don't blame her."

"Do you feel unsafe?" he wondered. Then thought better of it, "I'm sorry, that really wasn't appropriate for me to ask."

She patted his forearm and replied, "Lucas, I'd like to consider we're both on the same side in this." She rose her eyes upstairs knowingly. He wondered if Rosemary had fully come around to him, accepted him as both a person and as a suitor for Elizabeth, or if she were just implying that she didn't want Elizabeth to leave. "So I don't mind you asking. I do feel safe, generally, though there's an edge to it now, for me and all the women in this town, quite frankly, especially the single women. You know, I have Lee, and we have the phone, and I don't have a child I'm responsible for protecting, nor do I have her same level of trauma. She's barely sleeping and I don't think she's been eating much either. Yet she's so stubbornly determined to manage all this on her own she scarcely talks to Clara or I about it. And certainly not Lee or Bill."

"Why does she want to do this on her own?" he wondered, feeling a bit hurt by that again.

She shrugged, "I have an idea but I'm not comfortable disclosing that. You'd have to ask her yourself, Lucas."

He nodded. "She mentioned to Nathan and I that she thought having Tom here might help her feel safer at home."

"Oh poor dear. Well yes, I can understand her perspective."

"He was quite agitated though, Rosemary," Lucas added. "Nathan and I were worried that maybe…"

"Oh no," she affirmed. "He's no threat to them, at least not physically. He may mess with her emotional state but he'd never harm either of them. Absolutely not. Tom's not the wisest, most steady man but he is loyal and can be very sweet. He'd most certainly be protective of them. Did she tell him what happened?"

"No. He asked what happened to her hair and she told him she just wanted a change."

Rosemary looked upstairs again, worried, "I see. Well she most likely wouldn't have wanted to discuss that with him in front of you or Nathan. It's not an easy thing for a woman to talk about, you know."

"I get that," he grumbled.

She shook her head, "No. I doubt you do. Men tend to view these things quite differently."

He swallowed, "I absolutely do not blame her, if that's what you're implying."

She shook her head, "No. It wasn't. I was just suggesting that for most women, intimacy is an act of love, it's the sharing of oneself with the man they love. And it requires a great deal of trust on her part, in that man, to care for her and ensure she's safe being vulnerable with him in that way. She needs to be able to trust in his ability to guard and protect and cherish both her body and her heart, because they're very interconnected for us."

"Rosemary, if she's worried about that with me, I swear I would never, could never hurt her like that," he exhaled, alarmed.

She shook her head, "Oh no. She's not. Believe me." The remarks made Lucas ponder what exactly Elizabeth had disclosed to her. She had just confessed to him before Nathan showed up that she felt safer with him than anyone else, so perhaps that was all Rosemary meant by it. "It's just that for men, it's usually primarily about the pleasure and sometimes, though not always, about that emotional connection. So for most men, an unwanted or unplanned encounter is rarely a shameful thing, never really a crisis, and they're usually the ones in more control of the situation, unwanted or not. But for a woman, it can cause a crisis of conscience at a profound level. When a man takes away a woman's agency like that, her ability to choose with whom she shares that kind of connection with and under what circumstances, well there are often deep, and sometimes irrevocable, repercussions from that. She is struggling to adapt to that loss, that loss of her agency, as well as to the fact that unfortunately this whole town knows about it. It will take some time for her to feel like herself again and it's possible she might never; that happens too. What she experienced was deeply, deeply traumatic for a woman and she's dealing not only with her physical pain but her emotional suffering from that trauma and our society's varied expectations of women in general and how we handle such things, in particular. This is not an easy situation for her to navigate, Lucas, and you'd do best not to minimize that."

He wrung his hands in his hair, "I'm not trying to. I want to understand, understand what exactly is weighing so heavily on her mind. To know how I can help her." He choked, tearing up, "She's not well, Rosemary, and I'm worried about her but she's pushing me away and now, I'm scared I'm losing her entirely."

She nodded sympathetically, "And she's scared she's lost herself right now, Lucas. She needs to be able to learn to trust herself again, trust life and this town again as well, if she's going to move on healthily from this. And for Elizabeth, that means she needs to get to a point where she can feel safe again, on her own; where she feels capable of caring for and protecting Jack on her own. Where she feels safe in this home again. And as for you, she's trying to navigate her feelings in the wake of this; and I think that may require a reset for her. She needs to concentrate her mind internally for some time, Lucas."

"Alright, well what do I do? It's breaking my heart to see her like this, Rosemary," he replied, wiping a tear from his cheek. "I don't know what to do."

She squeezed his hand, "As much as she seems comfortable with, just be here. Just be her friend, nothing more right now. Don't be putting expectations of anything else on her right now. If she'll talk to you, let her talk and try to just listen. You can't fix this right now, Lucas; I know you men love to try to fix all our woes, but most often, we don't want that."

"But if she tells me something is wrong why wouldn't I try to help her fix it? Doesn't she trust my opinion?"

"Of course she trusts you but the point is, she is trying to learn to trust herself again. To trust her own intuition and instincts and opinions because you know if she can't do that, there is little hope of her feeling confident enough to continue staying here or of her trusting herself enough to find happiness again. She's trying to gain her agency back, Lucas; do not be trying to take that from her right now."

"Alright," he replied, starting to understand what she was expressing, yet wondering how he'd be able to continue showing Elizabeth he was invested, interested while still giving her the space she needed.

As if reading his mind, Rosemary added, "To heal, she needs to trust her own independence again. So help her do that. Help her remember how brave and fierce and bold she is. Help her feel confident in her ability to protect herself and Jack. Remind her of what a good mother she is. Show her how safe and loyal this community can be. Check in on her but don't treat her differently, don't treat her like she's tainted."

"I don't think she's tainted!" he objected, knowing he'd never have felt that way, regardless of what may have happened with those men.

Ignoring his comment, she added, "If she'll let you, help her with anything around here that might make her feel safer or just make things easier for her while she's recovering. I happen to know she hasn't cleaned out her gutters since the spring." She rose her eyebrows.

He chuckled, "Alright. Thank you." He smiled sincerely, "Truly, thank you. This makes a lot of sense. I think I get why she may have been pushing me away now; she doesn't want to feel dependent on me to feel safe again, does she?"

Rosemary smiled and tapped her nose, indicating he understood, "She doesn't want to make a decision based on fear. So you need to wait until she isn't afraid anymore."

He nodded, understanding. A rap on the door interrupted their conversation. "Elizabeth, it's Bill!"

Lucas sighed, "Oh I'd forgotten she'd asked Nathan to have Bill come by for dinner. She wanted his help with Tom."

Rosemary stood up with Jack, "Alright then, let's all go over to my place to talk."

Lucas looked upstairs. Rosemary replied, "Leave her a note. There's paper in the desk. And I'll lock the door on our way out." Rosemary moved over to the door and opened it, surprised to see Nathan standing there with Bill. "Oh my, well this is a crowd. Come on, we're going over to my place."

"What?" Bill asked with confusion. "She said she needed my help."

"Well she may, Bill, but they're both asleep and I think we can agree she needs to rest more right now. Let's go discuss a plan here."

Lucas came up behind her chuckling, "Rosemary you just told me not to try to fix anything."

"I did, didn't I?" She smiled. "Well that was advice for you. I'm allowed to meddle and this shall be a plan of my orchestration, respecting everything I just told you. So let's get to it. Nathan, go grab Florence and ask her to come over."

Nathan shook his head, baffled, but complied. Lucas smirked, feeling grateful Elizabeth had the formidable Mrs. Rosemary Coulter in her corner.