Chapter 22 – May 1910 – The heart doesn't enter into business decisions
Cat took the whistling tea kettle off the stove, cursing the shrieking interruption.
"Sorry. That's the last thing you need," Cat tutted.
"I don't know the first thing I need," Abigail sniffled, almost ready to laugh. When she had managed to calm down, a good few minutes after she had already blubbered all over her friend's housedress, she hadn't known how to explain herself. Another terrible impulse she hadn't thought through. But oh, how she had needed the comfort of a friend after her cruel expulsion from a favor she'd held so dear.
"You've had a rough time of it lately. Of course being treated like that would upset you, but Abigail, it isn't worth it."
She'd told some version of the truth, repeating her and Henry's conversation, though offering no context as to why she felt comfortable enough to go traipsing into his office making suggestions. What had she expected, really? That he would throw his arms around her as soon as she'd shut the door? That he would take her hand and tell her how he'd wanted to return her touch but couldn't? Had she even thought he would listen about the café? That he would turn around and renounce the Company and ask for her help?
Yes.
On some level, even if only in the abstract, she had imagined all of those things. Whatever she had thought would happen, she had pictured it bringing them back together, not severing them entirely. Her opinions about the café were only a scapegoat – she knew enough to know that. He'd used them to punish her for everything that had come before, for making him accomplice to her sin.
"No, it's my fault. I crossed a line. I ignored all the consequences because I wanted to."
She wished she could claw back the days, put herself back inside that church. The compulsion to be bound to him had been so all-consuming that it hadn't felt like she could fight it if she tried. But it was too forward, too much, too many people. If she had just gone about it differently, then maybe…
Oh God, what was she saying?
"You were trying to do what you thought was right," Cat continued. "That's never the wrong thing to do."
"Even if it hurts people?" Abigail asked, tearing up again at this undeserved reassurance.
"Abigail, there was no different way you could have acted or thing you could have said that would have brought that café back. You can't be responsible for what other people do, and you can't fix everything."
Her shoulders fell forward. "Oh, Cat, it's not just today," she shook her head, staring helplessly into the teacup Cat laid in front of her. "I haven't been a good wife or a good mother. I haven't been a good friend."
"Why? Why do you think that?"
Cat had grabbed her hand from across the table, making her flinch.
"It's… difficult to explain." She ran through words in her head – dissatisfied, restless, distracted. She couldn't say she was in love with someone else. She couldn't say that she had been clinging to the idea that somehow, through some impossible solution still undiscovered, she could have what she wanted without ruining all of their lives. Even if she could… it didn't matter now.
Cat squeezed her hand in understanding, reassuring her that she did not need to speak. "Abigail, I don't pretend to know what happens in anyone else's marriage. But what I do know is that you are an adoring and devoted mother, and that your boy has had as much love and attention lavished on him as any mother could possibly have given. And now he's grown into a wonderful young man." Cat shook the hand clutched in hers for emphasis, and Abigail had to smile at this even through the guilt. "And I think you've been a wonderful friend also, but you know... it's supposed to go both ways. Sometimes you're going to be the one who needs compassion and patience from everyone else, and that's alright. It doesn't take anything away from who you are or the love you have."
Abigail threw her arms around her friend once more and held tight. "Thank you, Cat."
"You're welcome. Now drink that while it's still warm enough to bring some comfort," Cat pulled away and nodded to the tea, "and I'll get us some cake too."
While Cat made her trip outside to the icebox, Abigail used the table napkin to clear the tear tracks from her face, taking deep breaths until the urge to cry had dulled into a passive ache. It was going to be okay. She had to believe that.
"And if you want my opinion?" Cat said, cutting back through her fog, "I think that man is afraid."
"Who, Henry?" she said, not having broken the habit. "Oh, yes, I'm sure all my power and influence had him quaking in his five-dollar boots."
The sharp whack of the cake server signaled her friend's disapproval as she fussed at the counter. "I don't think he's ever had to face the people he's affected. I don't think he knows how. All that arrogance and distance – that's how people like that protect themselves from the truth of who they are."
Abigail brought the tea to her lips to hide the pause this gave her. Her mind went back to the scene again. Henry Gowen, pompous businessman in his expensively tailored suit, making his pronouncements to all. Henry Gowen, blowing hot and cold with her on a whim, but always, always at a distance. Henry Gowen. Henry.
She lingered on the painted cup as she eased it back to the table, not ready to meet her friend's eyes. The well-used vessel was circled with faded green leaves, bursting intermittently into a series of flowers that would never otherwise be found together. Purple-pink orchids and orange lilies… a blue morning glory… and there, a circle of white petals with a yellow bullseye in the center.
Abigail put her thumb over the drawing, and sat up straight, sniffling back what was left of her tears. "Did you get the cake from Emily before they closed?" she asked.
"No, you just layer it and put it in the icebox! No baking, do you believe it?"
ooo
She arrived home late from Cat's, but threw herself once more into preparing dinner. She had also bypassed the day's shopping, given the events of the afternoon, and so the end result was a confusing smorgasbord of vegetables, beans, and bread. Noah had cocked his eyebrows at the stream of bowls she brought out, still looking around expectantly after she sat down. Her hand shot out to him to start the prayer before he could make any comment, and to her relief, he took the hint.
Noah must have eventually recognized the partial source of her agitation, as he began speaking about the café without introduction.
"Patrick said Virgil's devastated. Says he can't even bear to stay in town."
This was not what she'd expected. "He doesn't want to stay and fight it? What about the town council meeting?"
"I don't think he has the energy," Noah shook his head. "The company beat him down good."
Abigail's tolerance for any more disruptions or surprises that day was nonexistent. She stabbed her fork fiercely at the air as she spoke in earnest to her husband.
"But we're all willing to stand behind them. We can have the fight for them."
"I know you mean well, love. And trust me, I'm no fan of the company's decisions. But this is a business matter between Gowen and the Valentines. The town's got nothing to do with it."
"Gowen," she grumbled. The name felt strange and metallic on her tongue. She would tell Noah, eventually, about the confrontation in the mining office, before he heard it from someone else. Right now, though, her emotions were too jumbled to articulate anything of substance.
"Anyway," Noah said, "Coal Valley's not that big. And there's still the saloon."
"There's still the saloon for you," Abigail retorted automatically. Noah could only shrug, scraping at his dinner.
"Maybe there's something you can still do, Mom," Peter interjected. "Help find them another place, that the company doesn't own?"
Noah cut in before she could answer. "They'd need more capital than they have unless someone took pity on them at the start. The kitchen equipment isn't even theirs."
"This is incredible," she cried, throwing up her hands. "How can you sit here and talk like this while they are heartbroken? That family has lost everything!"
"What is it that I'm supposed to do for them, Abigail? Any complaint I would make to Gowen or the company would fall on deaf ears, and frankly I have more important things that need their attention. Since when is the café so important to you?"
"People are important to me, Noah. And I'm tired of having to let go of them and pretend it's for the best and that I don't care." She threw her gaze forward to her plate, violently spearing at her food to hide her watering eyes.
The table fell silent for a moment until Noah spoke quietly, impatience still lining his words like he was soothing a child.
"It's fine to care, love. It's good that you care. Just don't get your hopes up. There's too much going on that you can't control."
Abigail turned from him, disappointed. There was nothing left to say. Noah sighed and went back to pushing food around on his plate, at a loss for what to do with the disarray in front of him.
"I told Patrick I'd meet him for a drink," he said abruptly, wiping his hands and rising from the table. "I'll let you know anything I hear about Virgil."
Abigail did not protest – did not react much at all, really – as her husband grabbed a cap from the stand near the door and walked out. Her anger had been spent for the day.
Peter eased back from the table, unfolding his body from the chair as soundlessly as he could manage. To his own empty plate, he added the plate Noah had left behind. Normally she would have jumped up to help, but it felt so hard to move just then. Behind her the plates gurgled their submersion into the washbasin.
"Mom?"
"Hmm?"
"Do you regret getting married young?"
Her heart broke inside her chest, letting loose all the sadness she kept trying to lock in. Her Peter should never have had occasion to ask such a thing. But when she looked at him – at this grown man towering over her, concern in his eyes – she couldn't find it in herself to quiet him with empty platitudes. She was his mother, and though she could not tell him the whole truth of her feelings, she owed him at the very least her sincerity.
Swallowing back her tears, she chose her words carefully. "I don't regret marrying your father. I certainly don't regret my family. But sometimes I think that… when you marry while you're still a teenager… you learn who you are in relation to someone else before you learn who you are on your own. And then when you do start to learn that, sometimes it can be very painful to figure out how it fits into the life you've already made."
"How do you figure it out?"
Abigail thought for a moment. "I don't know," she answered honestly. "I think you need to trust that the other person will offer their love and acceptance, and that through give and take and understanding, you'll find a way to grow together that honors you both."
Peter nodded. He didn't ask the obvious question, whether this was possible for her and Noah. Maybe he knew just as well as she did that she wouldn't have been able to give him an answer. He dried the scrubbed plates and pressed a quick kiss to her head.
"I love you, Mom."
"I love you too, sweetheart."
Peter disappeared up the stairs and shut his door, leaving Abigail behind, her fork still hanging in her hand. For the first time since she had left Henry's office, she was alone with nothing else to occupy her. Loneliness hummed in the silence and all the day's conversations resurfaced to fill its void. All of the contradictions and hopes and disappointments ran together, circling around three words that cut across her mind.
My superintendent's wife.
The abrupt turn was a purposeful distancing – an inartfully wielded weapon to keep her from coming any closer. On this point there could be no doubt. But what she continued to have to face, no matter how much the contemplation of his motives sought to captivate her mind, was the truth by which the blade had been sharpened. She was not 17-year-old Abigail Moreland, free to play coy with a suitor. She was Abigail Stanton, sworn to love and honor Noah Stanton and find ways to grow alongside him, just as she'd said.
Many times had she drawn on this well of faith to reinvigorate the fervor of her commitments. Yet tonight she could only feel as though she were being pulled down into its dark waters, struggling to stay afloat.
