Author's Note: I lost a respected and long-time friend of mine, someone so very dear to my heart, shortly after I began writing this chapter. It's not been easy. Grief is a funny thing. It's been both difficult and yet somewhat therapeutic to write.
* People have been (lovingly) "screaming" at me for a cliffhanger I left several characters on in my last chapter in Neither Diamond Sunbursts or Marble Halls (Ch 10: "Brookfield's Mountie and The Runaway Bride") including our own Nathan Grant . . . sooooo, I wrote this chapter here in a bit of a "hurry" so I could get back to that story and answer the questions regarding the fate of certain characters. Hopefully, the "hurry" didn't affect the quality.
* On 12/29/21, my friend Elizabethb88 told me she'd been informed that, apparently, That-Show-We-No-Longer-Watch had added a female Asian character by the name of "Mei" and I just about fell over. Unreal! FYI: My "Mei Rose" character has no bearing/relationship whatsoever to theirs. I didn't even know theirs existed as I pay no attention to the social media of ANY Brian Bird projects anymore.
Thank you all for coming along on this N&E journey I'm writing! You've been a blessing to me. May you enjoy a Happy New Year, and I hope it was a very Blessed Christmas for everyone! XOXO
From Flame and Ash
— Chapter 11 —
The Resurgence of Jealousy
THE INSTANT Elizabeth spotted Nathan, the mercantile felt about ten sizes too small. It seemed to shrink around her suddenly buzzing head.
It was as if all the oxygen in the space had disappeared to make room for his height, for the width of his shoulders, for the striking impact of those blue, blue eyes — eyes that had not, as yet, seen her . . .
Nathan was standing at the counter and seemed to have an air of waiting about him, one lean finger tapping slowly against the scarred, well-used wooden countertop.
"Nathan!" A surprised female voice rang out, and Elizabeth's hands near about made applesauce out of the fruit in her hand as she watched Patience McHenry come out from the telephone operator's room and into the main body of the store, approaching Nathan with a gentle smile on her face. "Did Allie ever figure out a name for that little kitten you brought her?"
Elizabeth's lips parted and a frown of surprise creased her forehead. What kitten?
But the other woman was speaking again. "She was telling us all about it yesterday. My late husband brought our Martha a kitten and I well remember the difficulty in finding the perfect name for her. If Allie needs any help, please do have her come over; Martha and I would love to have a naming session with her."
A wheezed inhale broke through Elizabeth's now-compressed lips as she watched, aghast, as the other woman laid her hand on the counter next to Nathan's, so close their fingers almost touched.
At the sound, Nathan's head tilted, though his eyes never left the face of the mining widow opposite. It was almost as if he had heard something.
Or someone.
Elizabeth backed up sharply, slinking behind a tall shelf nearby, jostling it with her hip as glass jars rattled lightly. Stop, STOP! she thought desperately, grabbing the shelf with one hand to steady its wobbling.
"Why not?" she heard Nathan agree easily. "She and Martha are such good friends, and it would be good for her to spend time with someone other than her old uncle."
"I don't think Allie minds that one bit," was Patience's sincere rejoinder. "And old is not a word anyone would use to describe you."
Elizabeth gasped, feeling like someone was pressing on her lungs with the toe of a heavy boot. Was Patience flirting?! With Nathan?!
"I doubt Allie would agree," Nathan showed not the least discomfit and Elizabeth wondered how the man could be so blind — could he not see Mrs. McHenry's obvious interest in him as more than the uncle of her daughter's friend? "She's forever asking me how many years until she's as old as I am. She thinks she's funny."
Despite herself, Elizabeth found a reluctant smile pulling at her frowning lips. That so sounded like something Allie would say. She could almost hear the little girl's voice saying the words in her half-dry, half-mischievous way.
The other widow's laughter was light and warm, and Elizabeth recoiled at the answering smile on Nathan's face. Her ribs burned with an acrid ache of something she didn't dare examine.
Had she never noticed before how his smiles lit his eyes? Was Patience noticing it?
"Now, Katie, don't you fret." From behind her, she suddenly heard Ned Yost's voice as he moved between the aisles to the front of the store. "Florence and I don't mind one bit having you stay with us while you sort out what it is you want to do with your life and where you want to do it. Just you rest your head easy on that, my girl. You know I'd keep you with me forever, if I could."
"I know, Father." Katie's assent was loving as they passed her, and Elizabeth blindly busied herself with looking at the cans and bottles on the closest shelf, her eyes unseeing.
"Ah, Nathan, waiting for the package, are you?" Ned's voice greeted Nathan. "Let me see, where did I put it . . . ? Oh, yes, here it is; all yours now."
With a cautious finger, Elizabeth pushed a jar of pickled beets out of the way, creating a window on the shelf so that she could peer through and see what was happening. Nathan was holding a moderately-sized, rectangular package, wrapped securely in thick brown paper and twine, and addressed in what looked to be masculine penmanship. He seemed intent, turning the package this way and that with a questioning frown on his face.
"Expecting a package?" Patience asked.
"Expecting, no," he said slowly. "Just responding to a notice that there was a package waiting here for me."
His head swiveled slowly in Elizabeth's direction and her knees knocked together as she ducked down to avoid detection. Silence fell, then voices picked up again, and she started to relax back on her heels, deeply releasing the breath she hadn't realized she had been holding.
"Careful, Mrs. Thornton," a deep voice said in low-toned amusement from over her shoulder as her back bumped into something solid and hard behind her.
The abused apple fell from her nerveless fingers as she spun around and choked at the face so near her own. "N-Nathan!"
He crooked a dark eyebrow at her, his lips unsmiling, but something lazy in the eyes that held hers.
Mortified eyes jerking away, she sank to the ground, her scrabbling fingers reaching for the red apple, fingernails catching against the wooden floorboards. In a smooth move that belied his height, Nathan crouched down opposite her and with a reach made easy by his longer arm, he plucked the apple off the floor beyond her.
She stared at his hand, noticing for the first time, the tiny scar at the base of his left ring finger, faded white with age, and another, slightly longer, across the knuckle of the same finger.
She remembered the feel of those hands, hard against her as he had whirled her away from death in a barn such a short time ago . . . hands whose strength at her waist had brought her to gasping as he boosted her effortlessly into her saddle high atop Sergeant's back . . .
He was examining the rosy fruit. "What on earth did this poor apple ever do to you?" He placed it in her open palm, and she tried not to react as his fingers glanced off her hand. "It feels as though it's been through the wars."
Cheeks burning like someone had lit a match on them, she scrambled to her feet, mumbling something about "being surprised, is all" as a defense.
He stayed crouched at her feet, looking up at her searchingly, the outline of his shoulders relaxed and his muscled hands draped loosely between his knees, and for a crazy instant she wanted nothing more than to let herself fall, to tumble down onto his bent knee and rest her weary head against the supportive cradle of his jaw and neck.
Madness, Elizabeth, this is madness!
She took a step back as he slowly rose to face her, and nearly collided with a storage sack of onions hanging from a hook above her head.
"O-onions," she stammered as if introducing the vegetable to him, even as a message thrummed through her veins. Got to get away, got to get away, got to get away.
Once again his arm reached past her, and he loosed an onion from its confinement to drop into her hand. "Onions," he repeated and then he was gone, parcel in hand, the door swinging shut behind him, leaving her without breath and her eyes straining after him.
As she left with her produce, intent on heading to Mei Rose's rooms to drop off some food for the newcomer, she heard Florence saying to Ned, "Nathan's package was postmarked from Baltimore. And we all know who's in Baltimore . . ."
The silence that ushered her out the door was weighed with significance.
—ooO0Ooo—
During the hours when the dress shop was open, it was sometimes easier to take the outdoor stairs up to the level of second-floor rooms that Mei Rose Li now occupied, rather than having to go through a shop full of customers who were sure to follow her with questioning words and prying eyes. Today was such a day.
As Elizabeth's heels clanged against the metal steps that zigzagged up the side of the building, she glanced up, grateful for the wooden cover that extended off the roof over the top of the stairway, which sheltered those climbing up or down from being completely exposed to the elements. She knew she didn't have too much time to spend here, Laura would need to be relieved of watching Jack somewhat soon, but she wanted to drop in on their reserved new resident and make sure she had what she needed, even introduce her to some produce from the many farms that surrounded Hope Valley.
And she was still turning over what a Boston package to Nathan could mean. Thus far, she'd come up with nothing that made any sense.
Feeling a wobble under her hand, she yanked back with a startled exclamation. The simple metal guardrail that ran the length of the stairs was loose, rickety under the hand she'd pulled away. She couldn't see what was wrong at a glance. But she knew someone who could, and she smiled to herself at the thought.
It took several knocks before Mei Rose answered the door at the top of the stairs. Scents wafted out immediately even as the woman's guarded eyes gradually warmed at the sight of her. The smell of cloves and ginger and lemongrass lulled in the air, and closer at hand, wrapped in the fabric of the woman's lovely clothes was another scent, one of Mei Rose herself.
Her scent was as creamy and warm and lightly fresh as a soft orange blossom.
Elizabeth found that the woman was quietly pleased with the apples and onions she gifted to her, her unique eyes slowly softening with tiny warm lights.
And that she made an herbal tea that was unlike any Elizabeth had ever encountered before.
The mingled taste of cloves and ginger and lemongrass was still on her tongue when she left some minutes later, headed in a beeline for the smithy. Clanging metal and hissing steam greeted her as she reached the structure where town blacksmith Kevin Townsend worked; the smell of fire and iron filled her nostrils, reminding her of Nathan, and it was a scent so much cleaner and more appealing than many might assume.
The tall blacksmith looked up from the horseshoe he was hammering into shape and catching sight of her waiting, gave a nod, and after a few finishing blows, dipped the horseshoe into wooden bowl of cold water with a pair of tongs before setting it to the side. As he approached her, she greeted him and began to explain why she was there, pointing back the way she'd come. His warmly-hued eyes of blue, which had been attentive, sharpened the instant she mentioned a certain unusual female name.
It took him less than two minutes to gather some tools, sliding them into the pockets of his battered leather apron with hands that were, Elizabeth decided with a clinical eye, very attractive. Seeing them, it was no wonder that a certain lady had been arrested at the sight of them proffered to her as she stepped off a stagecoach . . .
Two minutes later, Elizabeth's peeking eyes were fixed on a most unusual scene that presented itself to her vision. The powerfully-built Kevin, booted feet planted firmly on the black of the metal steps, was stopped dead in his tracks with his dark-brown head tipped back, staring up at the doe-eyed lady who, it seemed, had simultaneously been on her way down the outdoor steps.
Elizabeth wondered if they knew how they looked; two figures frozen in time. They could have been carved from sun-warmed wood, so still had they become at the sight of the other.
Elizabeth walked away with a very content smile on her lips. It had worked. Even better than she could have hoped.
But on her way home, she passed another man and woman who were anything but transfixed by each other.
—ooO0Ooo—
Fiona Miller was backed up against the outside wall of the saloon, the heels of her smart shoes nearly flush with its flat surface, arms crossed tightly across her chest, and her mouth set with anger as her eyes snapped up into those of the man opposite her.
Hands planted squarely on his hips, expensively clad feet in a stance that seemed to be half-upset, half in appeal to the small woman before him, Lucas Bouchard's mouth was moving but it was nothing that Elizabeth could hear — and nothing that seemed to soften Fiona, who pushed off the wall to move a few inches toward him, completely unintimidated. The top of her head didn't so much as reach his chin, but it didn't seem to faze her one bit.
A respectable distance separated them, but the tension — and intensity — arcing off them was palpable even from where Elizabeth stood, watching them through eyes that turned hard and unsympathetic anytime they landed on the man in question.
A boot scuffed nearby, deliberate sounding, and Elizabeth jerked, only to find the man she couldn't seem to get away from — or was it the man that she didn't want to get away from? — standing across the roadway, a distance of about ten paces separating them.
Tall and solitary, Nathan was standing at the edge of the road, hip and shoulder leaning his figure against a pole that held up a boardwalk overhang. The parcel from earlier was nowhere in sight. His boot moved again, rustling gravel, and she tried to slow her breathing, realizing that he had deliberately made her aware of his presence. Nathan had wanted her to know he was there. Why? Surely he didn't think she was watching the scene because of some residual tendré for Lucas!
If only she could tell him how far that was from the truth.
He looked at her and there was something there, deep and unknown, but nothing that she could understand, then he drifted his gaze beyond her to the pair who seemed oblivious to all else around them as fire rolled off them toward each other.
Elizabeth's eyes, however, had been diverted in the opposite direction and were locked onto a shadowy figure that was quietly disappearing in the alleyway behind Nathan, looking for all the world as if leaving from a rendezvous with him. She caught a flash of blonde hair and elegant features under the worn and somewhat masculine hat brim, then the figure melted away and she could see no more. There was a flash in her mind, a face that struggled to come into focus, and she gasped softly. No! Surely, that figure slinking away couldn't have been —
No. It was ludicrous. That person would probably never set foot in Hope Valley as long as they lived.
Nathan's gaze swung again, sharply, and this time, she followed it, to see the tall outline of the man who had arrived on the stagecoach, his burly shoulders marking a distinctive silhouette, one that was making no attempt at concealment, unlike the figure that had stolen away behind Nathan. The lines of the man's body were tense as he watched the confrontation between Fiona and Lucas.
Slowly pushing himself off the pole he'd been leaning against till then, Nathan stood upright, relaxed yet alert, a certain coiled energy about him as if he could swing into action at any moment.
She never knew how it happened, but in a blink, she found herself nearly at Nathan's side, a shiver of nervousness coursing through her. There was a kind of primal atmosphere in the air, one that seemed like it would take but a spark to ignite, and she found a cold anxiousness making her palms clammy.
Down a ways, Lucas had his head tipped to look into the angry face and fiery eyes of Fiona below him, and in a sudden gesture that screamed of masculine frustration and ire, he reached up and violently tugged at his necktie as if needing air, pulling it loose to dangle in disheveled fashion from his neck as his arm swung back down in an arc of irritation.
The move seemed to galvanize the man from the stagecoach, who growled something Elizabeth couldn't catch and strode forward, reaching the pair in a few seconds flat.
"Nathan!" Elizabeth caught Nathan's arm, the same arm her sleeping son had so recently used as a bed, then released it like it had seared her as, under the cover of fabric, she felt the flex of tendon and muscle against her palm. "W-will they fight?!" she managed to stammer out.
"Maybe." Nathan was poised, but there was no alarm in his face, only a kind of quiet watchfulness in his eyes as he scrutinized the scene playing out before him. He must have sensed something though, for he turned his head to look down onto the planes of her face, tilted up toward him. "Sometimes, it's good for men to work things out physically, Elizabeth."
A warm shake flooded her at the sound of her name from his lips. Why did he have to say her name like that?!
'Liz-abeth.
"Men fighting over a woman is an act from a play as old as time." He seemed unaware of the effect his voice was having on her, and his attention had turned back to the trio in the street ahead. "If it gets out of hand, I'll step in. Until then, they're adults who need to work things out."
Elizabeth wasn't sure about this version of working things out.
But Nathan didn't seem worried even as the newcomer stepped in between Fiona and Lucas, positioning himself as if to protect Fiona from a threat. From the fierce energy roiling off Lucas as his stance stiffened, the interference wasn't going over well. Inches apart, the two men faced each other like lions in three-piece suits.
Behind the newcomer, Fiona's figure was one of imploring and frustration. At first startled by the newcomer's sudden appearance, she now seemed equal parts distressed and agitated with both men. Her profile looked to be near tears with vexation as she rounded them, a hand to either man's chest as she struggled to push them apart. The men fell back instantly, without resistance allowing her to part them, as her blazing eyes and pinched mouth seemed to register with them.
She flamed something at both men then spun on her heel and stormed off in the opposite direction so angrily that her hair came loose from its low chignon, spilling around her shoulders in a cloud of dark strands that looked like chocolate silk against the emerald green of her chic blouse.
Elizabeth released a breath.
Lucas and the stranger eyed each other. Lucas said something, the other man's eyes cooled before he said something in return, slow and deliberate; then he disappeared inside the front doors of the saloon. Lucas waited a moment, then followed. Less than a minute later, the stranger from the coach strode out of the front doors, clapping a hat on his head, a traveling bag in one hand. He glanced up the street, first one way and then the other.
"All's well that ends well," Nathan murmured, "but I think I'd better go make sure this actually does end well."
"What are you going to do, N-Nathan?" There she went, stumbling over his name again. She pinched her arm, trying to steady herself.
"Bouchard has the only hotel in town — unfortunately — and this gentleman looks like he needs a place to stay. I'm going to offer him the spare room at our house for the night, although I think I'll see if Allie can stay at Martha or Opal's tonight."
In another time, she would have offered to have Allie stay with her. The notion of Nathan taking Allie to stay overnight at Patience's house made her swallow past a burning lump in her throat.
"But he - he's a stranger. You don't know him."
"What better way to get to know the new man in my town?"
"But what if he's dangerous?"
"He's not. At least, not to me."
"How can you tell?"
"I can tell." He was as steady as a rock; his voice, his eyes, his quiet, solid confidence — and his charity towards this new stranger. He turned toward her, his sleeve brushed her arm, and he didn't move it away. If anything, she had the oddest sensation that he leaned in to her. "Do you trust me, Elizabeth?"
His voice was so soft, it was but a bare whisper in the space between them.
Do you trust my judgement, Elizabeth? Do you trust my ability to protect and defend? Do you trust who I am, Elizabeth?
The unspoken questions lingered long after the tones of his spoken question died out.
"Or I could lock him in a jail cell for the night in lieu of the warm, comfortable spare room." He lightened the moment with a slow smile, though his eyes remained deadly serious.
Despite herself, she huffed out something that resembled a laugh, before yet again losing her breath at the atmosphere that flickered between them. "That doesn't s-seem very hospitable."
"Indeed not," he said softly, his eyes fixed on hers.
"Nathan." This time, when she put her hand on his arm, she left it there for the most fleeting of seconds. Her words were a whisper. "I do . . . trust . . . you."
Why was it so hard to get the words out? Was it the way he was looking at her? Was it the difficulty she was having stepping back from him?
He looked down at her hand as it fell away from him and for a moment, it seemed as though something worked in his jaw. When he looked up, there was a slant to his expression that she couldn't read, but it made her knees feel hollow.
"Good." It was incredibly soft.
That was all he said. It was enough.
His eyes shifted past her left shoulder with a somewhat quizzical light in them, and then he was gone again in the next instant, moving with long strides towards the man who was making his way down the boardwalk opposite, bag firmly in hand.
There was the slightest sound from that same leftward direction beyond her and Elizabeth glanced around in time to see a small, feminine figure move slightly in a darkened but open doorway. This shape, she recognized without any doubts.
Katie Yost.
How long had she been there? How much had she seen?
The younger woman's face was collected and thoughtful as she watched the stranger from the stagecoach, but the way she caught her lower lip between her teeth was disquieted.
—ooO0Ooo—
Elizabeth went home and baked.
Brownies. Thick, dotted with chewy pecans, lightly drizzled with homemade caramel.
A loaf of bread. Round, scored across the top, with a golden crust and a soft interior.
Thick slices of bacon, sizzled to perfection.
And then she sat down and wrote.
The words poured out of her and onto paper, black ink filling the creamy surface with swirls and strokes of glossy onyx. It was a release of sorts.
When she was finished, and everything was wrapped and settled in the basket she had decided to carefully line with plain brown fabric napkins after several lip-gnawing moments of contemplation — thereby avoiding a frilly or femme appearing basket — she scooped Jack up from his play spot on the floor by her feet and propped him on her hip, pulling the house door shut behind her.
Pausing in the road outside her house to momentarily adjust baby and basket, one on each arm, she caught sight of Rosemary inside the open door of her house next door, sweeping the floor somewhat slowly. A frown worrying lines between her brows, she offered up a silent prayer that all would be well on the morrow, when she was to accompany Rosemary to her next doctor's appointment at the infirmary. Rosemary looked up then and caught her eye. Her hand went up in a wave, one which Elizabeth returned before turning her footsteps waveringly in a forward direction.
In spite of the shakiness of her pace, it took her less than a minute to reach her destination.
Standing before a doorstep and small covered porch that were more familiar to her than she had thought, she breathed in and out deeply, her ribs feeling like they were rattling in a wobbly dance around the breathing sacs she called her lungs.
She almost bolted when she reached the top step, her stomach churning.
What if it wasn't accepted, what if none of it was liked — had she remembered the sugar in the brownies!? — what if her writing was too much and the air between them became stilted and cold again? What if, what if, what if —!
The homey aroma of hot coffee wafting from around the closed door that now faced her was, oddly, what gave her the last push of courage to rap against the door, announcing her presence.
Raising a hand, she knocked tremulously, the wood slightly rough against her unsteady knuckles.
From inside, muffled by the door, came the sound of men's voices, then, a single set of footsteps approached. Closing her eyes, she prayed it wouldn't be —
"Elizabeth?"
Her eyes flew open.
Heaven had heard her and it was not the newcomer from the stagecoach. The man in the doorway, looking at her with a calm quizzicality, was the man who said her name like no one else in the world.
Dressed in a casual blue shirt, loosened at the neck, he just stood and waited for her to speak, looking at her with eyes that held the clarity of a winter morning and the mystery of an autumn midnight. The coffee from the mug in his hand steamed slowly in the air.
"It's food." Her voice blurted from her, and she held out the basket like it was an announcement.
Nathan didn't move.
Her arm lowered uncertainly.
"I'm not with Lucas —" More blurting.
"I know."
"— and I don't want to be."
Even Jack was still and silent in her arms. For the longest heartbeat, Elizabeth could have sworn she felt hands come up to slowly cup her face, while eyes of the most striking blue caressed her face with a patient tenderness that stopped her heart, and the feeling was so, so strong, her head spun as her world seemed to tilt on its axis.
But when it righted, she realized Nathan's hands had not left his side. Yet she had felt them. Strong, warm, so warm, and a little rough against her face.
I'm losing my mind, she thought numbly.
Ah, but you've gained some common sense, and isn't that a refreshing change? a little voice said gently somewhere inside her. She writhed at its truth.
Interiorly, she was whimpering and running around in tight, mortified circles, hands covering her horrified face. On the outside, she was just shaking. How could she be feeling his hands when he had not lifted them to her? Where were these words coming from? WHY was she telling him these things?! Couldn't she manage even a simple thank you gift with a little dignity intact?!
When his voice finally came to her, it was quiet as a forest clearing at dusk, with a soft roughness, like gravel under a clear streambed. "That is good, too."
And she was reminded, with a sharp jab, of his simple "Good" just an hour or two prior, in response to another truth from her lips.
Closing his front door behind him as he stepped outside, he reached out and took the basket from her drooped hand, and his fingers against hers were so gentle she could have wept.
"Sit with me, Elizabeth."
She did, settling herself beside his longer figure as Jack wriggled off her lap and seated himself, plopping his little body flush between them on the top step. On the far side of Nathan, she could see tiny wafts of steam rising through the air, indicating where he had settled his mug of coffee.
Nathan's hands unwrapped the bread from its enclosing towel and she watched, mesmerized, as they made short work of breaking off a moderately-sized chunk, ignored crumbs falling to dust the top of his pant leg. She waited for him to taste it, waited to see how his face would react.
But it was to her that he extended his hand, offering back to her the first portion of the bread that her hands had baked for him. Their eyes met and she felt her heart-rate accelerate at his gesture. The look in his eyes wasn't helping matters either.
But it was Jack who broke the spell, reaching up with curious, pudgy little hands to pull Nathan's hand down to his level. Nathan didn't resist, and even when the boy touched the crust with one tentatively questioning finger, he showed nothing but gentleness, smiling when the boy turned solemn eyes up to him as if to ask permission.
"Ask your mama," he advised quietly. "It was her piece of bread."
Jack's eyes swung between the two of them, before finally settling on her with a question in them. " . . . mama?" he whispered the serious question.
"Yes, Jack," her finger caught his nose in a swift caress, "you can have the bread."
. . . my beautiful boy, her heart finished the sentence.
Nathan broke the chunk of bread in half for easier eating, and put a piece in each hand, filling Jack's hungry fingers. Jack waited, bread in each hand, looking first at the loaf in Nathan's lap and then up at him. Nathan laughed softly. "Don't worry, Jack, your mama and I will eat."
And he handed her another piece and she told herself to stop noticing the feel of his hand against hers.
He took his first bite and his face changed, and Elizabeth had to look away lest her own betray the welling of relief and female satisfaction that soared through her. He liked it. He liked her bread.
He chewed slowly, as if savoring and discovering every ingredient for the first time, then looked at her and said simply, "This also is good."
Elizabeth released a breath she had been unconsciously holding trapped in her chest. Good seemed to be a code word tonight, masking a multitude of deeper, nuanced realities.
Here on these porch steps, in this simple breaking of bread between them — a bread baked by her hands, bread shared by his hands back to her — was a moment that felt nearly like a mirror image of a night not so very long ago where they sat thusly on her steps under the night sky with a basket of food between them.
"I — wanted —" Her words were halting, but somehow her eyes found his again and she forgot everything else. "I wanted to say thank you, Nathan." Her hand moved, just slightly, indicating the basket. "For saving our lives."
His eyes slowed in their drift through hers, his shoulders angling to face her under their cover of cotton. "You and Jack alive are all the thanks I could ever want," he said simply and the gravel was back in the timbre of his voice.
"Still . . ." Losing her voice, she just shook her head wordlessly.
He seemed to understand and they just looked at each other in silence before she finally whispered, "You put yourself in danger, too, saving us."
There was the tiniest head shake. "I'd do it again in a heartbeat, Elizabeth." Nathan's eyes were dark as a night sky and he husked out her name.
"In the b-basket," she fumbled for words, even as her cheeks first went deathly pale, then bloomed red-hot with a flush, "there's, um, something I . . . wrote . . . for you. For Allie and you. As a thank you," she clarified. "It's nothing really, just something silly I wrote, and it's probably not very good, but . . . "
He was already unfolding the sheets of paper, spreading them between his hands, tilting them into the lamp light to see better in the lowering dusk. And out loud he read them, her words, his voice a hypnotic murmur that made her forget to be self-conscious about what she had written, made her forget she was the one who wrote them, as he read aloud a short story about a little girl named Jess and a man named Evan who came to a small town in the middle of nowhere that was reeling from a loss, and brought fullness and light into the lives of all those they touched, initially resistant though many of those lives may have been to the newcomers. The town was forever changed by them and longed to do something to show them how blessed they felt to have them in their lives, and so they secretly gathered together one autumn night in a deserted field, and by the lanterns glow, they decided to —
But there the story ended, and Nathan slipped questing eyes up to her, eyes that were full of something that made her heart feel like it was falling out of her chest in a warm melt, as his quiet voice read her last word: "Continuandum."
To be continued.
"It's for the - the s-sequel." It was an effort to get the words out. "The rest of it, I mean."
Nathan was very still, his fingers moving ever so imperceptibly, slowly, in infinitesimal brushes over the slants and swirls of her words about the Evan-who-was-him, set in ink.
"Thank . . . you, Elizabeth." His voice was like rough velvet against her ears.
His hands were again on her face, thumbs tender against her cheekbones — only they weren't, and Elizabeth reeled dizzily somewhere between reality and dream, trying to grasp how something that wasn't happening could feel so real.
And between them, Jack's wide, attentive eyes watched the tall man outlined beside him, and in perfect imitation, slowly mimicked every line of Nathan's posture as the three figures sat in a silence that shimmered with embers, flickering golden around them in the night.
—ooO0Ooo—
Continuandum.