Chapter 31 – November 1916 – It'll never be enough
The Lee Mine was about two hours outside Saskatoon. Henry had visited the surrounding town once, if you could call perching in the saloon and trying to poach men from his rivals a visit. This had been before he had been transferred to Hope Valley, a pawn in the fallout of the company's racketeering charges. He squinted out the windshield, trying to remember the timeframe, whether he might have come across a younger Noah Stanton during that visit, perhaps newly wed.
The trip this time had taken him three days. He was quite conscious of the fact that in the not-too-distant past he would have come here by train, dressed to the nines, maybe stopping over at a city hotel. Almost certainly there would have been a shoe shine along the way, and a hearty handshake to an old business partner he met unexpectedly in the dining car. Instead he had climbed alone into his increasingly fussy old car, making his two overnight stops at a small inn west of Edmonton and a noisy saloon in the middle of he-didn't-even-know-where. Yet despite what those old business partners might think seeing him now, the year before she'd left had been the happiest he could remember in his life. He only wished that the price of his soul hadn't been so high.
He slowed as he found the edge of what he presumed to be the coal town's main street. Not sure where he would be out of the way, he pulled off on a curve next to the commissary. He became acutely aware, as he climbed out of the car, that the women walking between the shops had stopped to look at him, bending their heads to whisper together while their eyes followed his movements. It made him wonder what their Henry Gowen was like, and whether he, in his fur-lined blue coat, still bore any resemblance to a man who could squeeze a town inside his fist.
Forcing the winning smile of that bygone man out from under his bowler hat, he approached the closest group of women in what he hoped was a non-threatening manner. As he was equipped with only Abigail's married name for his inquiries, those women called over others, who shouted over to yet another, perched in a chair outside the mercantile and apparently named Agatha. Agatha, who had most likely been born in that rocking chair and would certainly insist on dying in it, turned out to be the key, and a few overwhelming minutes later Henry had the directions to Abigail's family home.
The shops and people receded behind him, signs of life sucked into the center point of his rearview mirrors. His old car squeaked down winding gravel roads, a discordant streak of blue being dragged across a washed-out landscape. As he passed each landmark the women had mentioned in succession, his heart began to splinter into competing forms of anticipation. Would she be alright? Would she be angry? Maybe she was happier there, and that was why she hadn't come back. Would she want to know how the town had reacted? If they'd guessed? What would he tell her? Or maybe she wanted to forget Hope Valley ever existed at all. Maybe she would simply tell him to leave. And what choice would he have if she did?
At last he caught sight of the modest frontier home up ahead. It was only slightly larger than his cabin, though its land stretched out further behind. He sent up something like a prayer that there were good memories here for her. That this was where she was meant to heal. He imagined her running across this ground as a child, pigtails swinging. And then a little older, sneaking her fishing pole from behind the shed with a twinkling grin.
But the ridiculous reverie shattered when an actual figure came into view outside the house, a woman bent over the path. Oxygen siphoned from his lungs. He wasn't ready yet, he thought, lurching the car to a stop in the middle of the road. But as the woman curled herself out again to watch him curiously from down the road, he saw that this was an older version of Abigail, made of rounder features and tanner skin.
Three days. He had driven three days. He could go a few more feet.
Taking a deep breath, he pushed the car forward again, pulling to the shoulder where the woman was still examining his movements. Clumsy and emasculated, he forced himself out of the car.
"Mrs. Moreland?" he squinted into the sun.
"That's me," she said, not entirely unfriendly.
"I'm Henry – "
"Gowen," she finished for him. "Yes, I thought you might be."
Henry crinkled his brow. His reputation had often preceded him, but typically he knew what reputation that was. He wasn't sure how he might have been characterized to Abigail's mother, whether her curt greeting was lined with animosity or melancholy or mere caution. Her expression was shrewdly closed, giving little away, and somehow he found himself shuffling his feet in front of her like a schoolboy.
"Is she here?" he asked simply.
She ran skeptical eyes over his face, no doubt trying to come to a decision about how much she would tell him, whether it was in Abigail's best interest to let him by. Finally, she blinked.
"She's inside," Mrs. Moreland said quietly, bending back down to the basket she'd set down at his approach.
"Allow me," he reached over to intercept her, finding the basket was filled with bread and weighed little. They stood there for a moment longer, she assessing him more thoroughly now and he waiting to be judged and then directed.
"She doesn't talk much," Mrs. Moreland said. "If I hadn't already known your name, I'm not sure I would know it now. I don't know if your being here is a good idea or a terrible one, but if it sparks any sign of life in her at all, well…," she twisted at her overcoat, "for that much I'd be grateful."
"I don't mean any harm to her, Mrs. Moreland. No more than I've already done."
She seemed to read the sincerity and regret in his face, nodding sadly. "I was taking this over to a neighbor," she said, taking the basket back. "You go on inside. She's by herself until Cody's back from school. If you care for her as much as your driving out here would suggest you do, I trust you'll tread lightly, once you see her."
The dark thought tugged at him as he bid her goodbye, his stomach twitching as in the disorienting moment after a last candle has been snuffed out. Abigail had always given as good as she got, and Lord knows he'd given. At her most furious, she was always spitting with spirit, life dancing behind the hardness of her glare; at her most dejected, you could still see love pounding in her chest, coursing through her down to each finger. An Abigail with whom he needed to tread lightly was not an Abigail he had ever encountered.
The creak of the porch steps felt uncommonly forbidding, doleful moans underneath his feet. A vision of Abigail's pain-stricken cries at the mine flashed into his mind. He rubbed his face hard, willing it away, and dropped his hand to the doorknob. If you care for her as much as your driving out here suggests you do… Whatever amount Abigail's mother imagined that was, he would place every chip he had on it being more. With Abigail, he had always cared too much – and he cared too much still to continue letting her do this alone. One more inhale for courage, and he turned the knob.
The front entry was bathed in shadows, sunlight coming in unevenly from the kitchen to his right. He walked gingerly over wooden planks, their complaints less sharp than the ones outside. His eyes moved slowly over the walls, not sure where to look for her. Surely if she had been alone in a bedroom, Mrs. Moreland wouldn't have… no. That wasn't likely. She hadn't called out though, so perhaps she was too far to hear his steps. When he reached the end of the entryway, he finally caught sight of her, off to his left. She sat in a cushioned chair, facing away from him and towards the back windows. From where he stood, he could see her rumpled hair running free down her shoulders, a blanket draped over her knees and brushing down across the floor.
The breath that had knotted in his chest broke loose. Whatever it was that would happen, he was with her now.
Still moving quietly, he came forward to another chair that stood empty to her right. She didn't turn at his steps, nor when the eastern sunlight caught his shape and cast his shadow in front of her. She didn't even turn when he sat down beside her. It was only with a shift of her eyes and a small shuddering sigh that she confirmed his presence there, six hundred miles from home.
He didn't know if he needed the silence or if he could sense that she did, but for a full minute they said nothing. He could almost pretend it was like one of their easy silences so many years ago, when they had been content to simply exist inside the same air. But that air was black now, and he couldn't unsee the ash that choked the space between them.
"I always did wonder what Noah was doing in that mine."
At the sound of her voice he turned. His face fell. Purpled and pale, she sat covered up in the blanket and a nightgown, her knees tucked up to her chest. Not a speck of light reached her once-bewitching eyes. As much as he should have expected something like this, he found he was not prepared. He nearly dropped from his chair to curl against her feet, desperate with the urge to embrace and kiss them, to bring her back to him.
"Abigail," was all he said. It didn't matter. She continued without reaction, staring blankly out the window as though she were still speaking only to herself.
"He was so rarely underground at that time, I always thought it was so strange and unfortunate. What terrible luck, I thought, that it had to be in those few minutes…"
She trailed off. Henry could only dumbly repeat what he always had. "He shouldn't have been there. We should have –" he stopped, correcting himself. "I should have made sure everyone knew. So we could look out for each other. I should have pushed harder on the company."
"Maybe. But you always thought it was just a little bit my fault too, didn't you?"
"I never thought that, Abigail. You couldn't have known –"
"Don't lie, Henry. We've done that too much. If it wasn't my fault, you wouldn't have needed to hide it for so long."
"The town didn't need to know what… what you wrote back then. That a letter even existed."
"We were well past the statute of limitations there, though, weren't we? Besides, you didn't even tell me."
He didn't know what to say to that. It was too much to explain, and he had grown less convinced of his justifications with every passing day. He ran his hand back and forth over the blue fabric, its floral pattern faded from the years of sun.
"What right did I have to feel that way? To want such terrible things?" she continued, not caring what he would have said. "Noah was good to me. He loved me. I have no excuses for what I wanted. I can't even say I didn't love him, because I did. Even the times I stupidly resented him, thinking he was taking Peter away from me – Peter wasn't even gone. Not yet. Not like…"
He remained silent as she trailed off and started again, trying to coalesce her thoughts for what seemed to be the first time out loud. In the melancholy regret that had begun so quietly in her disused voice, he could now hear the barest hint of a deeply buried anguish.
"I was greedy, and terrible. I sent them to their deaths, and for what? You didn't even - " she stopped, shaking her head. "It doesn't matter. I would trade places with them even if you had."
She didn't need to explain what she meant. Even if he had wanted her. Even if he had asked her to stay. Even if he'd told her he shared her feelings. But he hadn't. Instead he had let her walk out of his office that day and thanked God she hadn't stormed back in to find him with his head in his hands, choking his tears back so fiercely he had nearly blacked out. Instead he had thrown everything he could find, paperweights and lamps shattered in a blind rage against the walls. Instead he had let her go.
But this was not the time for confessions.
"I can't… I don't think we should have this conversation now."
She scoffed weakly. "Of course."
"But I understand how you feel. I wrestle with my conscience every night. For years I thought it should have been me instead. Even all these years later, there are still mornings I wake up wishing it had been me."
Abigail nodded tiredly.
"That's why you rode out for Becky."
Henry blinked. "What do you mean?"
"You've always taken an interest in them, my children. Staying when Cody was sick. Risking your freedom for Becky. Why was that, Henry? Did you think protecting one of my children could make up for losing another?"
It was a stinging indictment that made the better parts of him bristle that she could consider his motives to be so arrogant. Yet the sudden coil in his gut told him the words held more truth than he had ever admitted to himself.
"Because I understand it now," she went on. Her voice was still thoughtful, holding none of the malice he had incurred from it. "I understand wanting to do anything you can to reverse what happened. I would try every possible solution, take every chance, however ridiculous it might seem. The good news, Henry, is it's not entirely on your conscience anymore. I'm responsible for Peter's death. I'm responsible for all of them. I'm the reason Martha will never have grandchildren. I'm the reason boys like Gabe couldn't have a childhood. And I'm the reason my daughter-in-law was a widow before she was a wife."
He wanted to rip his own heart out to see her like this. He cursed himself, thinking he should have been with her these last weeks, but he knew that wasn't true either. It was based in some ludicrous notion of self-importance, the idea that you could fix someone else's sadness. He knew from experience that nothing he could say to her would make her stop blaming herself.
He wondered suddenly if this was how it had felt for her to see him punish himself all these years… if he had hurt her this much.
"So what's the answer, Abigail?" He could hear his fear coming out like anger as it always seemed to do. "Do you want to stand trial? Go to prison, like I did? Will that make you feel like you've served your time? Because I will tell you, Abigail – you never feel like that. There's always something else you think you could do or should have done. The debt is never paid."
She twitched, the first real reaction he'd seen her have. "How am I supposed to make it right then?"
"You can't. The hardest part is learning that. Learning to accept that you can't. This exile isn't your prison, Abigail. This is," he said, pointing to his heart. "And it's going to follow you wherever you go. So do your penance, if that's what you need. But you told me once that there was a reason I came back to Hope Valley, even after everything I'd done. Because it was my home and the people there were my family. Well, that goes double for you."
"Is that what I said?" she asked softly, her eyes beginning to shine. "Sounds like an attempt at wisdom from someone who has never actually been very wise. But I don't deserve to be home, Henry. I haven't paid any debt at all yet – no more than anyone else has. Because even when I thought they died because I loved you, I still never really gave you up. The form of it changed over the years, but my focus has always been on you, in one way or another. And I can't allow that to continue."
The words were light, matter-of-fact, arranged in neat lines that betrayed nothing of the messy, excruciating, life-consuming burden it was just to exist within each other's radius. And yet it was perhaps the plainest they'd ever spoken about those intervening years.
No… not 'they'. Still just her.
His inability to decide what he wanted from her was why it was all still measured in years. He was bitter when she left and guarded whenever she came close. Her outstretched hands had always been both salvation and torment.
Why had he never left?
Because her presence was his punishment. And his absence was hers.
Loved. Past tense. Can't allow. Present tense.
Just as he had, she would deny herself any reprieve, whipping herself with guilt and self-sacrifice until her heart was as shredded as his. She was too good to end up like him. He had done so much to try to protect her from it. But in the end he had failed, the same way he had failed everyone else.
She turned back to the window, her body dismissing him before he could say anything more.
"Goodbye, Henry," she said. "Please don't come back here."
ooo
Henry spent the night in saloon lodgings. Pains in his chest that had a become familiar signal forced him to take refuge off the road, his palms sweaty as he peeled them from the wheel. The closest lights he could find had come from some town on the province border. He didn't ask its name and no one there had volunteered it, though they did inquire as to his need for certain other services, which he politely declined.
Other than the croak of "bourbon" for the first drink and a wave of his hand for the second and third, he kept to himself in a drafty back corner, the table sticky and worn under his shirtsleeves. His coat, no longer the impressive armor it once was, hung limp and worn over the chair beside him. He thought about the scarred line of comforting stitches hidden in its interior, as mocking a characterization as that weathered old coat.
He had always concealed deep inside his soul all the stormy muddled knots of life that Abigail could wear so visibly, be it guilt or fear or love. He was perversely envious of the way she could allow herself to feel it all, the way she could run it over her fingers and drown in it. If Abigail believed in the rightness of something, even it was her own destruction, she would put every bit of herself on the line.
And by far the most absurd thing she had ever believed in was him.
His fist curled around the tumbler, stopping just before it shattered.
What misguided romantic notion could she have had of him that had persuaded her to risk an illicit touch? He was neither good enough nor important enough. There were times in the months afterward when his anger had flared thinking about it, wondering what the hell she had been playing at. He resented the realization of how maddeningly close she could bring him to the edge of ruin.
He had never left Coal Valley – or Hope Valley, as it was so blisteringly called after every hope had abandoned him – because for better or worse, he never wanted to leave her. Unlike Abigail, he had considered this the lesser pardon. But maybe she was right. Maybe they ought to have disappeared from each other's lives as soon as they'd entered them.
Because in these whiskey-stained shadows, in the quicksand of nighttime thoughts, he could admit that the worst moments had been the moments when he was not angry or suspicious. The moments when he fooled himself into thinking he could possibly give her what she seemed to want. He'd indulged in those thoughts, too often and too eagerly. He had been driven to utter idiocy by them, making reckless moves he had laughably convinced himself were discreet.
The blow to Noah's jaw had been his confession. He had understood that as clearly and as quickly as Noah had. It had been his worst indulgence, and with it had come the most gruesome of consequences.
He threw the amber liquid back, vainly shutting his eyes against the images that were burned permanently into their darkness.
