A/N: Okay, I know the phrase "pep talk" might be anachronistic, but it was funny.
Chapter 33 – Winter 1917 - You're not going to win with a pair of twos
Christmas came and went, the stagnant chill of winter hanging over Henry in spite of all the town's attempts at festival and community – things he'd never truly felt included him. But as bleak as life had been these last few months, it was not until Clara and Jesse's wedding that hopelessness began to steal the breath from him. The ghost of Abigail haunted the empty spaces of the church, the absence of her name echoing loudly against the vaunted ceiling.
He didn't stick around for the celebrating, though Lee and Elizabeth did their darndest to convince him. But the Flynns did not need his gaping wounds spilling gloom all over their festivities, nor did Henry need the specific cacophony of forced camaraderie jostling his head.
"I just can't believe she would miss her daughter-in-law's wedding." Elizabeth shook her head at Henry as he made his excuses to go. "I thought this would make her realize what she's left behind."
Elizabeth had been writing to Abigail fairly regularly throughout the winter, with only sporadic and brief replies in return. It was heartening that enough of a spark had survived behind the opaque eyes Henry had seen that she would not completely forsake her closest friend. Still, they knew how important family was to Abigail, and how deeply she must have buried herself in her shame to not be there for Clara.
"I admit I had harbored that hope too. But to come home in the midst of what she's feeling and see Clara married… it would only remind her of how Clara came to be here."
"Yes, I suppose it might be too much for her," Elizabeth frowned. "To be reminded not only of Peter, but also the trial. Even her own wedding. I know I can't help but think even more of Jack today."
"Let's not concern ourselves more than we already have," he said, trying for Elizabeth's sake to shake the sense of futility that had been battering him all day. "She wouldn't have wanted to distract from Clara's happy day."
"I'm not giving up on her yet, Henry. We have to keep trying."
Keep trying. No – what he needed to do was try seven years ago. Trying now, after what Abigail had already said to him, after she hadn't come today… well, there didn't seem much point.
"Good night, Elizabeth."
ooo
Henry had only two distinct distractions from thoughts of Abigail and the mine, and he committed himself firmly to both. One was his oil company, in which his profits were slowly recovering, and the other was a now-weekly poker game with Lucas Bouchard, in which they were not.
Other men in town would often join them, with the notable exception of Constable Grant. Henry had witnessed enough to know the avoidance was due less to a moral objection to gambling than to a personal objection to Henry's business partner. For his part, Henry had come to enjoy Lucas' company more than he might have expected given they couldn't have been any more different in their backgrounds or current demeanors. "Clearly it's because we both have terrific hair," Lucas had joked once. Henry supposed that was as good an explanation as any.
"Have you heard much from the newlyweds?" Henry asked Bill, who had joined them for this particular evening.
"Clara and I barely have a chance to talk at the café, but from what I can tell, Jesse's almost more nervous to be married than he was courting."
Lucas laughed at this. "How so?"
"He's tiptoeing around the house, giving away all his possessions."
"Kevin's new table?" Henry guessed.
"Among other things. Doesn't know how to live with a woman, I suppose."
"Who does?"
"Well, one woman is being very nice to me this evening, gentlemen." Lucas splayed four Queens out in front of him, the reveal met immediately with a chorus of groans and the sound of cards hitting the table.
"I need a breather," Bill grumbled, gathering up the deck and handing it to Lucas. (There had been some more of that Avery-brand consternation about dealing turns weeks earlier, when Bill had discovered Lucas was an amateur magician. That was, until Henry reminded him that the other person at the table had embezzled money from the entire town.) While Bill went to scowl a few feet away at the bar, Lucas shuffled and passed the cards out to himself and Henry.
"I'd never thought about it," Lucas mused.
"What's that?"
"I mean, I have, I suppose. I've thought about marriage, building a life together, entertaining friends. Just hadn't given much thought to all the adjustment that would need to happen to create that image."
"Something tells me yours and Jesse's concerns wouldn't be quite the same. For starters, I doubt you'd be living in two rooms above a café."
Lucas had the good grace to look modest. "Perhaps not. I'd like to think we could make a new home that we truly feel is ours and where we both feel comfortable. Hopefully at that point we will have learned to take each other as we are, and worked to make any differences become strengths."
"That's a bit of an idealistic notion. There are always bumps in the road, things you have to work hard to understand or accept that you never will. And then you decide whether you want to be with the other person in spite of those things or you don't."
"I imagine I would be the one causing more difficulty in that regard, being on my own as long as I have. You can sympathize, I'm sure, as a lifelong bachelor."
Henry shifted his gaze across his cards and grunted in some semblance of acknowledgment, Restless, he ran a finger across his brow. Lucas startled slightly across from him.
"Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't realize," he said, seeming almost embarrassed. After a pause, he asked, "Were you widowed?"
"No," Henry corrected him quickly. "We divorced."
"I see." Another pause. "Must have been some insurmountable differences there then." The tone was one Henry had learned over the course of his life was prying in sympathy's clothing. Out of anyone in this town, Lucas Bouchard was least likely to pass judgment on Henry's method of marital dissolution, but that didn't mean he wasn't just as nosy as every other insufferable gossip around here.
Henry took a swig of his drink, sucking the liquid back on his tongue. "Three," he said, shedding the useless cards from his hand. Lucas stared at him with some level of amusement before sliding three new cards off the deck. "How'd you pick up on that anyway?" Henry asked.
Lucas smirked. It hit like a splash of cold water, making Henry drop his jaw.
"Do I have a tell?!"
The smirk crooked higher. "Wouldn't you like to know."
Smart aleck.
Henry huffed and threw two chips into the center of the table, then craned his gaze over toward the bar, unreasonably looking for that ironic defense against the arrogance of youth – namely, the arrogance of age. Bill was no longer standing there, however, so Henry searched the saloon while Lucas considered his bet. He found the judge by the dartboard, having a friendly conversation with Kurt Lawson. Once Bill had caught his signal that the round was almost done, Henry's gaze drifted over to the far wall, beyond where Jed Campbell was lining up his shot. The last attempt was still there, point teetering just below the bullseye. A small lurch in his stomach reminded him of the resentment with which Abigail must think of their shared past now, those memories he had always held so dear.
Lucas' lucky guess notwithstanding, she was the only person in Hope Valley he had ever told about Jane. Even then, he'd kept so much of the truth from her.
He hadn't married for love, not really. He had appreciated Jane well enough in the beginning, but there was never any particular passion or even admiration between them. He had married mostly because that was what successful businessmen did. Because he needed someone to run a home that he could come home to.
That didn't make it hurt any less when she was unfaithful to him. Her transgression was an embarrassment – proof that he was as unworthy and unimportant as he had always feared. Even the telling of it reeked of insult, for she had not even had the decency to let him discover her in deceit. She simply walked into his study, laid down a plate of ham and biscuits, and told him that she and Christopher would be leaving in the morning. With a calm succinctness, she answered each question he asked her, and after he had sputtered and yelled in the face of her stoicism, threatening her with a series of awful fates, she wrote down the address at which his attorney could deliver her the divorce papers to sign and left as easily as she had come.
But the sharpness with which he had felt that betrayal was not borne from any delusion that he had truly loved Jane. No; it was that she was the last person he could pretend loved him.
While Noah Stanton had far more wealth in this department than Henry ever had, he was still a good man who didn't deserve to feel as Henry had felt. Even less so. And to lose a woman such as Abigail…
"Henry?"
Lucas' hand was waving in the periphery of his vision.
"Yes, sorry," he said, turning back to the game.
"I raised a dollar."
"Mm." He attempted to focus on his cards but he could still feel the disconcerting frisson of someone watching him. When he glanced up past Lucas' shoulder, his eyes caught hold of Florence Blakeley's, piercing him with a cold and knowing look from the dinner table she shared with Molly. It wasn't the first time he'd been on the receiving end of Florence's impeccably rendered hostility and he imagined it wouldn't be the last, yet tonight it still managed to rattle him.
A confused Lucas followed Henry's gaze to the side of the saloon, but Florence had already turned away. "Something the matter?"
Henry shook his head and tossed his cards down. "Just this deck," he grunted. "Think I'll call it a night."
"Now?" Bill asked, appearing at his shoulder with an exasperated look. "But I was just sitting back down."
Lucas smiled. "I think our friend here wants to spend some time with his mirror."
"Forty years of playing cards and this…," he eyed Lucas cheekily as he shrugged into his coat, "whippersnapper says I have a tell."
"Wha-?" Bill sputtered. Sputtering was Bill's tell. "Well, that's simply not true!"
"Mm-hmm. I'll catch you next week, fellas." Henry gave Bill a playful whap of his hat and started to walk off.
Goddammit, not again, he thought a second before his legs gave way.
ooo
"I told you I'm fine!"
"And I told you I don't care what you say!"
"Oh good, something new and different for us."
"Comforting to know we'll go out the same way we came in," Bill quipped.
"No one's going out," Faith said, unamused as she inserted herself between the two men. Sighing, she focused on Henry. "Well, you've clearly recovered enough to engage in dramatics. I do want to monitor you a bit longer though. Do some tests."
"How are we doing?" chimed in a voice from around the doorframe.
Irritation throbbed behind Henry's temple as he groaned. It was like they wanted to kill him.
"They need to run some tests," Bill told Lucas.
"Bouchard, listen to me," Henry said, a thought occurring to him in a panic, "do not tell Elizabeth about this."
Lucas pursed his lips.
"Oh for crying out… we've been gone for ten minutes!"
"She was walking by!" Lucas threw back in a weak defense. "But I did tell her I would handle it and to just have supper with Little Jack."
"There's nothing to handle!" Henry tried for probably the third time to sit up and was, for probably the third time, met with Faith's firm hand on his chest. He reluctantly (and, he made sure everyone knew, unhappily)settled back onto the pillow. Bill huffed a breath out above him.
"Faith, do you and Lucas mind giving us a minute?" the judge asked.
Faith worried at her lip while she considered. "I suppose. I do need to wait for Carson anyway. But don't," she looked pointedly at the two of them, "rile each other up."
The nurse disappeared, pulling Lucas back outside with her, and for the first time in hours there was quiet. It should have helped calm him. But the distinct echoing emptiness of an infirmary floating around you while your chest is still in knots and your heart is still racing and Bill Avery is standing over you is actually – Henry couldn't help but notice – very much the opposite of comforting.
"What happened?" Bill asked, his tone gentler now. Henry sighed.
"I don't know. That's the truth. It keeps happening though, these last few months."
Bill nodded. "It's normal you'd feel unsettled. No word from Abigail and all these old memories kicking up. Old feelings."
Henry shrugged. "It's nothing I don't deserve."
It was silent for another few seconds. From his propped-up pillow, Henry could see Bill's jaw grinding. The other man pulled over a chair, letting it scrape with an awful noise over the floor – on purpose, Henry imagined – before he sat and spoke again.
"Henry, do you know," Bill finally asked, cocking his head to look at him, "how angry I was when I found that letter in your old office?"
"Ticked off that it was evidence you didn't find before?" Henry guessed, honestly not knowing where this was going.
"No. Well, yes. But also because it meant you took the fall for that company again, after they had already made you the scapegoat back in Hamilton. And then later it turns out you took the hit even worse, hiding what happened with Noah. And I just cannot understand it, Henry, why you want so badly for people to believe you are a terrible person."
"That's not…" Henry started, shaking his head. He couldn't get his thoughts together. What kind of question was that to ask someone who had just collapsed? "What does it matter whether people hate me for things I did or things I didn't?" he spat out. "In the end they'll come to the same conclusion: that I'm an angry old coward who isn't worth the trouble."
"It's amazing you can still think that about yourself. Honestly, Gowen, that level of obstinacy – it's almost admirable."
"Bill, if I'm about to get a lecture, I'd prefer you wait until I black out again."
"I don't know if you've noticed, but I am sitting at your bedside right now – "
"I noticed."
"Great, so maybe we could dispense with the blustering soliloquys about how forsaken you are. Could we do that?"
Henry grunted, but waved his hand in reluctant agreement.
"How many times does Elizabeth need to tell you you're like family to her before you accept that it's true? How many hands of poker do we need to play, with Lucas or Lee or any of the other men who have been perfectly happy to sit down next to you, before you believe you have friends?" Bill asked, his eyes flashing. "Ned? Mike? Anyone who's ever spoken to them could never question their loyalty to you! And do you know, Richard Wolf told me that Robert was proud just to be dropping off your mail? You have people's forgiveness, Henry. You have their respect!"
Realizing he was about to pound his fist down onto Henry's legs, he pulled back, slowly unclenching the muscles in his face that had grown tight with fervor.
"What I'm trying to say… is we don't know if she's ever coming back. So while she was always the best of us and you should always cherish the faith she had in you… you have got to stop pretending you are in this alone."
There wasn't a whole lot he could say back to that, with the man still sitting at his bedside and all. And, he realized, there was nothing he wanted to say. His heart for once felt like it had swelled large enough to drown out the thoughts swimming in his head.
"I appreciate it, Bill," he managed.
"You're welcome," Bill said, shifting back in his chair, maybe a little too smugly. Henry supposed he could overlook that in a poker buddy. Or a friend.
"I'm going to go get Faith." Bill put his hands on his knees and forced himself up. Before he turned to go, he squinted down at Henry one more time. "Don't expect a pep talk every time you get into one of your moods."
"I wouldn't dream of it."
ooo
For the next few weeks he could believe that that had been some kind of a turning point. His spirits lifted, he worked better – hell, he even played better poker. He started to come to terms with the fact that he needed, at the very least, to move on to figuring out how to move on.
On a bright March morning, he made his way across the road to his office, tipping his hat to Fiona as she rushed back to the switchboard. Robert and Allie walked by as he reached the door, giving him a quick wave and a "Hi Mr. Gowen!" Whether because of or in spite of his advice to the boy, things seemed to be going well between the two. He smiled and greeted them in return. Fumbling his key into the office door, he twisted the knob.
"Cody!"
The shout came from behind him. Henry's head shot up, turning to the sound.
The boy was taller, lankier if that was possible. A newly acquired weariness tinged his skin even as he beamed with excitement. But the flash of blond hair and blue eyes was unmistakable
