Nathan made a final check on his list. He'd wired ahead to the sawmill and the hardware store in Murrayville with his list of materials for the miners' housing and let them know what he wanted to bring back with him. He'd also sent a wire to a Mr. Herbert Anderson, a lawyer he'd gotten to know in Benson Hills, and explained the situation with the row houses. Anderson said he'd be more than happy to read over all the paperwork and make sure that Gowen's lawyer had put no loopholes in the contracts.
"Allie, you ready for a fun day with Abigail?" Allie looked up from her play corner behind his desk and nodded enthusiastically.
"Ab'gail said cookies!" she said, grinning.
Nathan picked her up and gave her a hug. "Cookies, huh? Will you save some for Miss Thatcher and me? We might want cookies when we get home."
Allie nodded and took hold of Nathan's collar. He'd noticed that she did that when she knew he was going away. He knew why she did it and it only made him hold her tighter. "I love you, sweetie," he said softly into her baby-fine hair. "You know that?" he pulled away and looked into her eyes as she nodded to him. What does she remember? She looked back at him and blinked without showing impatience. Nathan gave her a last hug and said, "C'mon. Cookies!"
As they began the walk toward the row houses, Nathan saw Florence Blakeley running toward him.
"Constable!" Nathan stopped and turned as Florence caught up to him. "We're all set for the meeting after church tomorrow. We thought we would just have everyone stay seated, and we were hoping you would explain how everything will work? I know you said it was a choice that we all get to make, but I haven't talked to anyone who doesn't want to help."
Florence paused, which was unusual in itself. But then she took Nathan's hand suddenly. "Thank you, Nathan. You can't know how much this means to all of us. For someone to stand up to Henry Gowen on our behalf... it's just... well..."
Nathan was afraid that Florence might begin to cry, and he knew that would be more than he could take today, so he patted her hand and said, "We're going to make this right, Florence. The whole town is."
She looked up at him with tears in her eyes. "And you really think we can build a new church at the same time? What a blessing that would be."
Nathan smiled at her. "I don't see why not." He patted her hand again. "We'll all have our hammers out already, so, might as well!"
Allie was anxious to get to the cookies, and she had already been pretty patient. She pulled at his pant leg and Nathan looked at Florence and said, "Allie's on her way to make cookies with Abigail..."
"Oh! I won't keep you," Florence said, already backing away.
"Florence," Nathan said before she got too far away, "Thank you for your help getting the word out and organizing the meeting. I really appreciate it."
He thought he might have seen Florence blush just a bit, and then she grinned widely at him. "People don't often thank me for talking too much," she said, laughing a little. "Enjoy your cookies!" And with that, she was off.
Elizabeth was ready to go when Nathan dropped Allie off at Abigail's. They walked back down and got the wagon and were soon on their way.
For a while they talked about Allie, and Florence, and the plans for the housing, and then they sat in silence for a time.
They both knew why. Elizabeth could feel a difference in Nathan; he was distracted and nervous, and had regressed somewhat to his tongue-tied self. She moved closer to him on the seat of the wagon and put her arm through his, leaning her head on his shoulder.
She felt his breathing change as he took courage from her closeness, and he realized she was allowing him the time to gather his words.
Then, without preamble, Nathan began to talk softly.
"We were in Quebec City," he said, putting his arm around Elizabeth while holding the reins with the other hand. "Colleen was two years older than I was, and worked there as a secretary in a law office. She was brilliant, and had talked about becoming a lawyer herself someday, though she knew what a steep climb that would be for a woman."
Elizabeth could hear the admiration in his voice, and the love he had for his sister. It was palpable and clear.
He shook his head and laughed softly. "We couldn't believe our luck when I got a post there, knowing that we would be able to see each other so often and that I could watch as Allie grew up," Nathan looked over at Elizabeth and shrugged slightly, "At least for a little while, until the Mounties sent me somewhere else."
Nathan paused and Elizabeth got the feeling he might find this less difficult if it were a conversation, which always came so easily to them. "And Allie's father?" she said softly.
Nathan smiled at Elizabeth, grateful for how comfortable he felt with her. He leaned over and kissed her forehead tenderly, and then looked back out at the road, feeling a little more confidence.
"I never liked her husband Dylan too much. I never understood her attraction to him, but I think she liked him because he seemed a little dangerous to her." Nathan looked at Elizabeth again, shrugging. "Growing up in Airdrie gave me a good foundation and a love of the outdoors, but for Colleen, once she was a teenager, I think it just felt stifling. She got out as soon as she could and went all the way to Quebec City. To 'look for her life,' as she put it."
Elizabeth laughed softly. "I understand that. I've gone the other direction and found my life in a small town, but it was the same for me. And she met Dylan in Quebec City?"
"Yes. She fell hard for him, and they were married within six months. Allie was born about a year after that." Nathan sighed and flicked the reins, keeping the horses' pace up. "Dylan always had some scheme or another, and he managed to spend the money she earned just as fast as she made it. But she loved him and saw the best in him. I just never could."
Nathan continued, "Dylan liked to drink and play cards, which made it even more surprising that Colleen... well, it was surprising that she would fall for a gambler. Dylan always seemed to have an angle. He felt he was a born salesman, but there's a difference between a salesman and a con-man, and Colleen never quite saw that."
"But you talked about it? She knew how you felt?" Elizabeth asked.
Nathan nodded and laughed softly. "Oh, yeah. Colleen and I never pulled any punches with each other. She didn't believe in dancing around issues. It was one of her best qualities - you always knew where you stood with her. She knew I didn't like him, and she made sure I knew she did like him. And that was pretty much that." Nathan laughed again and shook his head. "She was something else. She'd have me so mad I'd want to spit, and then the next minute we'd be laughing..."
Nathan took a deep breath, and Elizabeth simply squeezed his arm and gave him a minute. He was staring out at the empty road, but he was seeing something else. She reached up and rubbed his arm, gently, and he nodded, knowing he needed to keep going.
Nathan's tone was different now, and Elizabeth could tell they were reaching the difficult part. "Dylan was traveling, which he did a lot, when... when it happened. Colleen and I were meeting for lunch downtown, and she was late. So I had already been standing outside the café for a half hour before she waved at me from the other side of the street, and I wasn't in the best of moods."
Nathan sighed deeply and put his head down. "God, if we could go back and change things..." His voice was getting thicker, deeper, and Elizabeth could hear the emotion welling there.
He looked up again at the road, now finding it difficult to meet her eyes. "I was upset that day, because I'd been passed over for some assignment I wanted and instead was scheduled for a detail with one of those Quebec City rich girls we talked about." Elizabeth began to hear something creeping into his voice now. Guilt, self-contempt. "What's strange is that, for the life of me I can't remember what the other assignment was." Now he turned to her and his eyes held a coldness in them. "That's how important it was to me."
Another deep breath, and the words came faster.
"She was across the street, holding Allie. I could see her looking from side to side, waiting until the traffic slowed down so that she could run across to join me. I just stood there, shaking my head, wondering why my sister could never be on time, and why I was now forced to eat quickly and run back to work."
Nathan's breath was coming faster, and Elizabeth realized he had entered that world, that time. She moved so she was as close as she could possibly get to him, holding him, wanting to keep at least a part of him here with her in the present.
Nathan's voice was becoming choked now, and he turned the wagon over to the side of the road. He pulled up the horses and let go of the reins, leaning forward. He couldn't stop talking now, as it began to spill out.
"I should have told her to stay where she was." He looked at Elizabeth and his eyes were bright with the tears that were threatening. "I should have done so many things... "
"She was juggling Allie, and her purse, and a bag that turned out to have an early birthday gift for me in it. If I had only... just walked across the street and taken some of those things from her, taken Allie, and then used the red serge to slow some traffic down so we could walk across together... but I was upset with her and disappointed in my day, so instead I just watched her struggle."
Nathan leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees and his face in his hands. The pain Elizabeth felt emanating from him entered into her own heart and she felt her tears welling up and her own breath coming faster.
"I know I looked impatient, and maybe that was what prompted her to take a chance that she shouldn't have. She stepped off the curb and was half-way across when she dropped the bag with the package in it. She reached down to pick it up, but Allie started fidgeting, wanting to get down and walk." Elizabeth saw a tear fall through Nathan's fingers and drop to the boards on the wagon floor, shining and changing the color of the weathered wood. She leaned even closer and put her arms around him.
"Things happened so fast from there that I still have trouble... I just know that my reactions kicked in and I knew that I had to run out there and help her. The cars were going so fast, and there was a streetcar that was coming. And she was standing right on the rails..."
Nathan sat up, and Elizabeth could see his eyes staring almost vacantly ahead while it played out in front of him. She kept hold of him as he talked, reminding him that she was there.
"I was almost to her when a car came flying by and nearly hit me. We were only a few feet apart when I saw the streetcar. So did she. And for one of those moments when time stops, we just looked at each other. I felt like our whole life together was speeding past like the cars that were going in front of and behind both of us, like it was a blur of memories, all held there in her eyes..."
Another tear, this one sliding down Nathan's cheek. His breath was shallow, as if he was still standing there on that busy street in Quebec City. Then his voice got softer, but this time it had some steel in it.
"And then I saw the moment when she knew. One of us was not going to make it. Either I was going to run to her and be hit, or she was going to be lost under that streetcar with Allie... and I saw my sister decide in an instant what was important."
Elizabeth brushed a tear away from her own cheek, mesmerized, horrified, almost unable to bear the depth of the pain he was feeling.
"She dropped her purse and turned Allie around. I saw her say, 'I love you so much,' the words perfectly formed in the few feet between us, as if I could hear them over the roar of the traffic. Then she looked at me... and I saw her say, 'I'm sorry,' and 'I love you' and then...
Nathan's breath caught and so did his voice. Another tear, and almost choking, he said, "She threw her to me. Allie."
"Oh, Nathan..." Elizabeth said, finally unable to hold back her own tears. But Nathan wasn't finished. Now that he had spoken the words, he couldn't stop.
"I caught Allie in my arms in the split second before that streetcar hit her and changed my sister into something unrecognizable, her beauty and her spirit and her passion lost in a moment, in a... rush of metal and glass... and blood. And I stood with Allie, who was wailing... and confused, before I stepped back onto the curb, to safety... aware that Allie was now... mine to take care of, and her mother had... died... giving me that responsibility."
Nathan looked at Elizabeth, his eyes wide, stricken. "Probably five seconds had passed. Allie was clutching my collar so tightly I could hardly breathe. I'd caught her by instinct, and now we held on to each other for dear life."
Nathan's eyes turned cold, hard under the glass of his tears. "And as I stood there in my red serge, the protector, the defender, helpless, holding a screaming child, I knew that my life would never, ever, as long as I lived, be the same."
Elizabeth turned and put her arms around him, cradling his head on her shoulder and he finally, completely, let go of nearly half a year's silence. In the comfort and safety of her arms, he allowed himself to immerse in the guilt, regret, and grief of a memory that couldn't be reconciled or erased, that had played in an endless loop of what ifs for so long that he hardly could recall what his life had been like without it.
During the long minutes that she felt his chest rise and fall in aching spasms, Elizabeth held him tightly, whispering to him that it was alright, that she was here, but most importantly, "It wasn't your fault."
Elizabeth had just done this, with Rosaleen. And the fact that a man of twenty-six and a girl of eight could transfer guilt into silence so completely, reminded her of the power it held over all of us. Relentless, holding our hearts in a vice grip until that daily regret becomes normal, a ritual we play out almost without knowing it.
"It wasn't your fault, Nathan," Elizabeth said, over and over. It was what he needed to hear, and he needed to hear it from her lips. He knew that she would tell him the truth, and if he had feared recrimination or blame from her, he knew now that she would never see it that way. She would say, as she was now, that sometimes things just happen, and they don't always have to be someone's fault.
As she held him, Nathan felt the weight begin to drift off his shoulders, and he already was lighter. He held her more tightly and his breathing began to calm as he felt the strength in her begin to transfer and inhabit his grieving heart.
"Thank you," he whispered fervently into the silkiness of her hair, suddenly in this new freedom taking in the aroma of lavender that filled the air around her, and the peace he felt in her arms.
Nathan knew that something had changed in him, just from speaking out loud what had been his greatest, darkest secret, the thing he had told no one through all these long months of condolences and self-doubt. His greatest fear was that if he told anyone, they would look at him the way he had been looking at himself in the mirror. That they would say what he had said to himself so many times: You should have done more.
Instead of what he feared, Nathan felt Elizabeth's arms around him, offering forgiveness, and as that washed over him, he began to feel something he hadn't considered; he might be able to forgive himself.
Nathan's retelling had been so immediate, so in the moment, that Elizabeth had been able to put herself into Colleen's place, imagining what it would have been like to know that none of them, or two of them, could survive. And in a flash, Elizabeth knew that Colleen was feeling it too, in those split seconds; her own guilt, her own regrets, and the only way she knew to make it right.
"She didn't blame you, Nathan," Elizabeth said in a rush of understanding. "She trusted you, she knew you would care for Allie with every last ounce of your strength. She knew you would catch her. And that had to give her peace."
Elizabeth pulled away and looked into his eyes. They were both gazing through tears now, and Nathan's eyes were so blue and more like that mountain lake than they had ever been. Her heart was breaking for him, thinking about all the months of him carrying this burden alone, and at the same time looking at Allie every day, wondering, wishing he could have done something, anything, different.
Elizabeth saw another tear slip from the translucence of his blue eyes down his cheek and she kissed it, wishing there was something she could do to ease his pain. She didn't know that she already had.
Nathan turned his head until his lips were on hers, wanting not only the comfort of her kiss but also wanting to find some way to let her know the gift she'd given him. And in that moment he knew that it was a gift only she could give, because he loved her.
He wouldn't say it now, though he longed to whisper it against her lips so badly he had to force himself into silence. But Nathan knew he didn't want that moment to be forever joined with this sadness. He was ready to leave the guilt and regret of the last six months here by the side of the road, and to travel into the future with hope, and with Elizabeth.