A/N: It's time for another disclaimer. I don't own these characters and I make no money from this. I just enjoy thinking up different ways Seth and Jessica might become a couple.

Episode 1: My Breaking Heart

Seth

"Mornin' Doc!"

"Mornin' Eve," said Seth as he glowered at his pancakes.

"When does Jessica get back?"

Seth looked at Eve sharply. "Why should you ask me?"

Eve gave him a look. Why, indeed? "You are picking up her mail, watering her flowers, keeping her bird alive, are you not?"

"Yes," said Seth shortly.

"Then why shouldn't I ask you when she's coming home?"

Seth's mouth tightened into a grim line. "I'm not sure," he muttered.

"Not sure! What do you mean? You're not sure why I should ask you or you're not sure when she's coming home?"

"I'm not sure when she's coming home," he ground out.

"Well, what's she doing? What's she up to?"

"I don't know." It cost him something to admit that to Eve Simpson, the loudest busybody in town.

Eve glanced shrewdly at the doctor. Everyone knew he carried a torch for Jessica. Hopeless. And she was probably off on some adventure, having the time of her life, no doubt stringing along another eligible, wealthy, handsome silver fox. Eve followed Jessica's exploits in the papers, same as everybody else in Cabot Cove. While she personally thought the good doctor was an old stuffed shirt, she did have compassion, in spite of what people said. "Well," she said in her brisk, no-nonsense way, "I'm sure you'll be the first to hear her plans."

Seth grunted, but Eve could tell it was a grunt of appreciation rather than one of annoyance. She studied him carefully. He wasn't a bad looking man, actually. If the right woman took an interest in him…she shrugged. She wasn't willing to take on what amounted to a charity case. One twitch of Jessica Fletcher's aristocratic nose and he'd be right back at her side. Anyone in Cabot Cove could tell you that. He was a goner. Pity. "See you around, Doc!" and she threw a wave in his direction as she left the diner.

Hmph, thought Seth. She must have come in expressly to ask after Jessica. It was embarrassing, not to mention frustrating, not knowing the details of Jessica's trip. He felt a bit put out…alright more than a bit…at being taken for granted. Perhaps he had plans! He grunted again. He had plans alright. And they all revolved around a blue-eyed, fair-skinned redhead whom he could never quite pin down.

He read the papers, same as everybody else in this town. Only difference was, he read all the papers. He had a tacit agreement with Jane, God bless her soul. He thought she suspected, like everyone else in this town, but she was kind enough never to allude to the fact. Yesterday's paper had a photo of her with some silver-haired, silver-tongued devil, the exact opposite of him in every way. He sighed, pushed away his empty plate, and finished his coffee. You're a damned fool, Seth Hazlitt. A damned fool.

He pulled up at Jessica's promptly at 2, just after Pete dropped the mail. He was a man of habit, routine. He'd learned the value of routine in the military, that precision of habit that had saved his life more than once.

The war had taught him many things, he mused, chief of which was delaying gratification. He observed the other raw recruits around him neglect their daily tasks at their peril and he accepted their gentle, and sometimes not so gentle, ribbing. He knew what had to be done, and he did it. Piece of cake. That didn't mean he lacked introspection. Quite the contrary. Beneath that calm, some might call it simple, exterior lay the heart of an ambitious striver.

He'd grown up poor, so he watched. He watched those wealthy families, the ones who summered at the Cove when it was fashionable to do so. He watched, and he learned. Later, he took a job as a waiter's assistant, bus boys they call them now, in the restaurant of the town's nicest hotel. He learned how to snap a crisp white tablecloth into place, how to properly lay a table, which fork to use. He hoarded the phrases and mannerisms of the wealthy as greedily as he did their tips.

His mother, who'd died when he was a young boy, had always quietly encouraged him. "You've got the spark, Seth Hazlitt, the spark of my father. Don't let anyone tell you differently. You can do anything you set your mind to. Anything," she added in a fierce whisper, her strength sapped in ever increasing amounts by the consumption that wasted her frame and wrenched her lovely face during those prolonged coughing fits. He'd been both relieved and angry when she died, and the sound of rain on a tin roof could take him right back to that terrible moment.

He watched and learned and, when the war started, he recognized it as his only opportunity to rise above the limitations of being a Hazlitt in Cabot Cove. He enlisted eagerly, falsifying his records in order to add that precious year to his age. He kept himself to himself, so quiet and reticent, surprising everyone with his aptitude on the various tests the raw young recruits were administered. Soon enough he found himself on the way to Jacksonville to train as a paratrooper. He hadn't known, before, the fine mind he'd been gifted. The army pushed and pulled it in the direction it thought best, but Seth, damned, stubborn Mainer that he was, bided his time, having already decided the direction he thought best.

He left the army with a decent nest egg and an introduction to his CO's former professor at Harvard.

That discipline served him well during college, then the grueling years of medical school. He was already accustomed to the grinding poverty of the student; he was only bothered when a pretty young nurse named Ruth Singleton caught his eye, or was it the other way around? Turns out there was a fine mind behind that pretty face, along with a cheerful nature that looked on life as an adventure. Why Seth, she'd said, it's more fun to figure out what to do without money! and his careful, frugal heart was lost.

Ruth was the sunshine that never failed to pierce the clouds that often dogged him. She believed in him, she chivvied him, she supported him, she loved him. And when he couldn't save her, he folded in on himself into a place so dark he thought he'd never feel the sun on his face again.

He shook his head. None of this reflection was accomplishing the tasks around Jess's house that he had planned for today. He retrieved the mail from her box, organizing it as he walked to the front door.

He sipped his whiskey slowly as he listened to what had become one of his favorite albums. He wandered around the small rooms he occupied above his practice, appraising it through a woman's eyes. Through Jessica's eyes. He rented the whole house for his practice, and it just made sense to live upstairs. Whom did he have to care for, to cherish? Whom did he have to strive for any longer? Ruth's medical bills had been immense, and he'd sold everything they owned to get out from under them. He'd ended up with a few thousand dollars and no heart, so he agreed to partner with that quack Terry in the ill-fated Juniper Lake scheme. He barely got out of that with his freedom. He was lucky to walk away with the cash he did.

After that fiasco, he decided to come home to Cabot Cove. He neither needed nor wanted much, and old Doc Wilson was happy enough to have him. It had taken a few years, but he was as settled here as he'd been when he was a boy, and he found that thought didn't give him pause as it used to. Seems he'd made peace with the boy he was and with the man his father was. And so had everyone else. His mother had been right, though, as mothers often are. He did have that same spark of his grandfather, and he'd never forgotten it.

"Is that really so, Hazlitt?" he said aloud as he looked around in the gloom. "Would your grandfather consent to live like this? Would Ruthie have you live like this?" He sighed and took another sip. "Just a wee dram, Ruth. You don't have to worry about me." But I do, he could almost hear her say. "No need, woman," but he paused as the familiar tune rang out. His heart seized as he recognized it.

I get along without you very well

Of course, I do

Except when soft rains fall

And drip from leaves, then I recall

The thrill of being sheltered in your arms

Of course, I do

He'd listened to this Chet Baker record incessantly in the months following Ruth's death. She'd been the one to introduce him to Chet Baker. His tastes had run more to country-western than jazz, but he was happy enough to dance to whatever tune she chose. He remembered shuffling about the floor in those early days, holding his arms around the empty air.

But I get along without you very well

I've forgotten you

Just like I should

Of course, I have

Except to hear your name

Or someone's laugh that is the same

But I've forgotten you just like I should

What a guy

What a fool am I

To think my breaking heart

Could kid the moon

His thoughts turned to Jessica. He had been fooling himself; he knew that, of course he did. He longed for her while she was away, and it nearly killed him to think of her in some other man's arms. He tried never to think of that, but it was like a sore tooth he kept pushing against.

What's in store?

Should I phone once more?

No, it's best that I stick to my tune

I get along without you very well

Of course, I do

Except perhaps in spring

But I should never think of spring

For that would surely break my heart in two

Tears threatened and he dashed them away angrily. This wasn't like him at all. "What a guy," he murmured. "What a fool am I."

"But maybe," whispered a voice that sounded uncannily like Ruth's, "maybe you could be a different guy."

He had strange, unsettling dreams that night, but in the wee hours of the early morning, he dreamt of Ruth as she had been when they first met. She was so lovely, so vibrant, that he felt tears threaten.

"Ruthie," he choked.

Ruth flashed him a brilliant smile. "It's wonderful to see you, dearest."

"I've missed you."

"I know." She looked around. For some reason, they were standing in Jessica's living room. "But you've made a good life for yourself here, Seth." She nodded her approval. "A good life. But it could be better, couldn't it?" she asked gently. She smiled fondly as he looked away, embarrassed to meet her eyes. "You love her, don't you?"

Seth swallowed. "I think I do, Ruthie," he said softly.

"You think?" she teased gently.

Seth smiled. "You always knew when I was less than truthful, my dear."

"So what do you plan to do about it?"

"What do you mean?"

"Seth, don't be deliberately obtuse! You are going to tell her, aren't you?"

"Hadn't planned on it," he said shortly.

"And why not?"

"Look at me, Ruth! She's…she's a published author. Successful. Worldly. She has plenty of money, and plenty of eligible suitors. Handsome, wealthy. I'm…well, look at me! What could I offer her? I'm an old man who lives in a few rooms above his small practice. I'm doing better now, but I can't take her to all those expensive places she visits." He grunted. "Nor could I escort her to those swanky parties she attends in New York."

"Why couldn't you, Seth? Why couldn't you do some of those things? The man I fell in love with was full of energy and passion. He knew exactly what he wanted, and he didn't let anyone or anything get in his way." She looked at him fondly. "Don't say it, Seth. That man is still inside you. He's still alive. He still has dreams."

Seth looked down at the floor. "I'm afraid, Ruthie," he murmured.

"I know," she said sympathetically. "Telling Jessica the truth is a risk. Remember what you always said?"

"Nothing ventured, nothing gained," he whispered.

"That's right," she said approvingly. She walked over to him and Seth swore he felt the warmth of her embrace. "Isn't it time you rejoined the human race?"

Seth woke that morning with an unexpected buoyancy. He felt alive in a way he hadn't in years. Although he knew dreams were a nightly occurrence, he seldom recalled his own on waking and never with the detail he was able to see in his mind's eye. Strange that seeing Ruthie so vividly, that conversing with the lovely, arch young woman she'd been hadn't left him with that familiar melancholy. Instead he felt energized. He threw off the covers and bounded out of his bed. "Nothing ventured, nothing gained, Ruthie."

A/N2: This began as a one-shot and grew to an absurd length. I will post around 6 installments...one every Sunday and Wednesday. I sure hope you enjoy it! As always, these two keep me engaged and invested.

I Get Along Without You Very Well was written by Hoagy Carmichael.