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And the Heart is Brave
Chapter 19
Elizabeth entered the judge's office and her eyes widened as Bill Avery stood before her, his feet braced, hands on his hips. Immediately, she knew. Could read from the expression on his face, why he'd called her here today.
"You know something," she stated the obvious as Bill nodded his head to her. He'd just gotten back from Union City, from his meeting with Calvin Roberts and finally the pieces of the puzzle had fallen into place. It all made so much sense now.
"Elizabeth?" Bill asked, taking in Elizabeth's expression. "You want to know, right? You want to know what I found out?" he asked, because something on Elizabeth's face showed that maybe she didn't. Maybe she didn't want to know.
For a brief second, Elizabeth thought the same. That maybe she didn't want to know. She'd chosen to simply trust Nathan, that he'd had reasons for his secrecy about Jack and she had come to terms with that decision. And she'd been happy since, at peace even, realizing her heart was opening to Nathan, this quiet man, his quiet ways, steadfast and sure. And now Bill had found out something. What if...what if it was something to negate her trust? What if...? Elizabeth shook her head.
"Tell me what you know," she told him. Good or bad, she would have to know.
Bill gestured to a chair and Elizabeth shook her head. "Okay," Bill said before launching. "First, Nathan was never assigned to Hope Valley. He asked to be placed here," he laid that information at her door. At Elizabeth's wide eyes, Bill nodded. "He came here on purpose."
"But why?" Elizabeth cried. Why would Nathan deliberately come to Hope Valley? It made no sense. And she still didn't know what this had to do with Jack. Why he'd kept his knowing him from her.
Bill drew in a deep breath, knowing he'd have to go back, go back to the very beginning of the story for her to understand. He drew a few steps closer to her. "Elizabeth, basic training at the academy is...rough," he began. "It's six months of intense training, day and night and your fellow cadets, well, they become like brothers. You become very close, very fast. You train together, eat together, bunk together. You're around each other 24 hours a days under tough circumstances," he explained.
"So...you think Nathan and Jack were close? At the academy?" Elizabeth was trying to follow along.
"I do," Bill nodded. It had been such a small group in the graduating class, of course they had been close. Even in the short term, even for just those six months before their lives had diverged and scattered them far and wide. Even if they never saw each other again, for that time they would have been like brothers, the group of them, more than brothers really.
"And?" Elizabeth prompted.
"And sometimes under those circumstances, sometimes promises are made," Bill said, remembering what Calvin Roberts had told him. Told him of the night the cadets had made promises amongst themselves, with one another, pairing off in sets.
"What do you mean? What promises?" Elizabeth asked.
Bill sighed. He had to do this right. Make sure she understood. "Elizabeth, when you're a close group of men, and you've chosen this dangerous profession, all of you have, you're in it together. And you talk, you talk with each other, and you know that some of you won't make it. You know that some of your brothers will be cut down. So you make promises," Bill said. Slowly he began to recite how such a promise might go. "If anything happens to you I'll watch over your family."
Elizabeth's eyes widened, suddenly putting the pieces together. "You think...you think Nathan made some kind of promise to Jack to watch over his family?" At Bill's nod, Elizabeth objected, "But Jack didn't have a family then!" At least not her and Little Jack, not this family. Did he mean his mother, his brother? But Bill was shaking his head. "They weren't promising for those families, Elizabeth. They were promising for the future. For the future families," he said.
"But that was ten years ago!" she objected. "Nathan said he never saw Jack again!" she said, wondering about such a long ago promise.
"It wouldn't matter, Elizabeth. It was still a promise," Bill explained to her the way of it. The Mountie way. The Mountie code. Duty. Honour.
Elizabeth shook her head, trying to take it all in. Had Nathan come here to watch over her and Little Jack because of some promise he'd made? Elizabeth blinked, thinking it through, trying to remember. The first thing Nathan had done when he arrived was...to bring her Jack's pension. Was that normal protocol? For the incoming Mountie to personally deliver a pension? Or had Nathan made a special effort to see it safely into her hands? And then she thought of the other things...how he did rounds to the rowhouses, checking on Little Jack's safety...again, was that normal protocol? To check on residences like that? She remembered the railing he'd built so Little Jack wouldn't fall off the porch...and ...and...it went on and suddenly it became clear to Elizabeth that that's precisely what Nathan had been doing. But in ways so subtle she'd been unaware.
"Bill, even if this is all true, why didn't he just tell me? Why all the secrecy?" she asked.
"Because he couldn't," Bill informed her. "That was part of the promise. That you couldn't know, that he couldn't tell you."
But Elizabeth was shaking her head. "How can you know that? You can't know that! You weren't there!" How could Bill know that secrecy was part of the promise?
Bill let out a long slow sigh. Elizabeth had known Jack for five years, married him, and she'd known Nathan for over a year and still she didn't fully understand the ways. The Mountie ways. But Bill did. And he had another way of knowing about the promise. He let out another slow sigh. "Elizabeth, I'm going to do something now because I think you need to know, you need to understand," he said, as Elizabeth turned inquiring eyes towards him. "Oh, I don't know," Bill shook his head. "Maybe it's because I'm getting old," he said. "Nearer the end of my life than the beginning. And I guess now I just care more about the living than the dead," he said.
"Bill!" Elizabeth said, a tad shocked, wondering what it was he was going to tell her.
"So, it's like this, Elizabeth. I'm going to break a promise I made. I'm going to break a promise, so you can see why Nathan couldn't break his," Bill said.
"What promise?" Elizabeth asked.
"A promise I made...to Jack," Bill said, as Elizabeth's eyes widened. "The night before his last mission, remember?" Bill asked. At Elizabeth's nod, Bill continued, "The night before his last mission Jack made me promise that if anything happened to him that I would watch over you, look out for you, make sure you were okay," he said, as Elizabeth blinked, taking in his words. "But I had to promise never to let you know, Elizabeth. That I couldn't tell you," he said, letting her absorb the words. If Jack had elicited such a promise of silence from Bill it would have been the same for Nathan.
Finally, to drive home his words and his point, Bill asked, "So, how'm I doing, Elizabeth? You tired of this old man hanging around all the time?" his words indicating he'd been doing just that, fulfilling Jack's promise to watch over her.
Her eyes fixed on Bill's face, Elizabeth's mind began to think back. All the times she's felt Bill's love and support since Jack's death, the times he'd been there for her and Little Jack, his steadfast presence in the storm of her grief. Suddenly her chin trembled, then her face crumpled and she raised hands over her face and began to cry. Immediately Bill came to her and pulled her into his arms.
"Hey, hey," he soothed. "I didn't mean to make you cry. I just wanted you to understand why Nathan couldn't tell you. That it was part of his promise. It was the Mountie way, the Mountie code," Bill said, and Elizabeth sniffled her tears and nodded. She understood. She understood now. "Don't be too hard on Nathan, Elizabeth. He was just doing what he thought he had to. And you know Jack would have done the same," he told her.
Elizabeth nodded. Jack would have done the same. Jack. And then something niggled in Elizabeth's mind. Jack. Because if Nathan had made a promise to Jack, then Jack would also have made one to Nathan. This wasn't a one-way street. It would have been an exchange of promises. If Nathan had promised to watch over Jack's family, then Jack would have promised to watch over Nathan's. And if something had happened to Nathan instead of Jack then Jack would have watched over his family. And Nathan's family was...Allie. But Allie had no one else in her life to care for her. So Jack...Jack would have...swiftly and surely Elizabeth knew. She knew that Jack would have. He would taken on responsibility for Allie, taken care of her, brought her to Hope Valley to raise even. And that meant...she would have too. She would have helped raise Allie too.
Suddenly, it all became overwhelming in Elizabeth's mind as she tried to sort it all out. It's like life was some sort of unfinished patchwork quilt, their lives the pieces. Constantly in flux, the pieces forming patterns, touching, connected, only to break apart and reform into new patterns, but always connected, one part of the whole, the patterns always changing, but the pieces the same. Elizabeth shook her head, trying to clear the thoughts. "Thank you, Bill," she said, finally. "Thank you for telling me all this," she said, turning from him and heading out the door.