Chapter 36 – March 1917 - Her on her side of the street and me on mine
Henry continued to make circumspect use of the café, though Abigail did not return to its kitchen for a week.
She caught his eye when he came in, too late for him to turn out again. It was becoming almost offensive how quickly his instincts now turned to retreat. It was not so many years ago that he would have walked in like he owned the place. That he had, in fact, owned the place. The pomposity of his former years was well left behind, but to act as though he was the one who could not bear Abigail? After all he had put her through? It was the height of hypocrisy.
He had no desire to make things even more difficult for her though, so he understood perfectly when she spent most of the lunch rush hidden in the back rooms, taking care of the cooking. Unfortunately, about halfway through his meal, Clara cut herself cleaning up a customer's broken glass. Henry hadn't seen exactly what happened when the glass dropped, but he hoped for Kevin the blacksmith's sake that he was simply a clumsy oaf; otherwise, he was about to find himself on the wrong side of some tongs.
He stood with several other customers to make sure Clara was alright, but they all dispersed when Abigail rushed out. Henry gathered from Clara's darting eyes and denial of any harm that she had no desire to leave Abigail alone while she took care of her injury; Bill seemed to have begged off the lunch hour now that Abigail could step in, and Henry could see no other helpers in the back. However, from what Henry had just witnessed of how Abigail could still stand as the authority in a crowd, Clara really needn't have worried.
Abigail finally succeeded in shooing the girl upstairs, insisting that the only blood that ought to be on her dishes was the steak's. Lowering the boiling pots and sizzling pans, she grabbed a water pitcher and took up the mantle of server, making her way through the maze of tables.
Henry smoothed his napkin back over his lap as he took his seat again. Then he reached up and smoothed the tablecloth. Taking his utensils back in his hand, he rearranged them onto his plate, knife over fork. No, he frowned, fork over knife. His hands went back to the napkin, smoothing it again. He had a sudden flash of standing beside his desk at school, waiting for his turn to be inspected.
The water pitcher was nearly empty by the time Abigail found her way to his table.
ooo
Unable to avoid the meeting any longer, Abigail faced Table 7 as brightly as she could.
"Henry," she said politely, topping off his glass. "How is your day so far?"
"Can't complain."
She fought the temptation to look around at the other patrons, unwilling to give them any hesitation or wariness that might subsequently be scrutinized. Henry too, she noticed, was keeping his eyes in a strict line between his plate and her. Perhaps this was too strict, she thought with an internal frown. It might suggest they only had eyes for one another.
"Any dessert for you today?"
"What have you got in the way of pie?"
Her lips twitched around a bittersweet smile. Any time Henry ordered pie, she couldn't help but think back to his bizarrely endearing order of multiple potatoes and corn fritters. She wondered if he knew how much that lunch had meant to her.
He'd been her champion as often as he'd been her opponent. Even when he had sat her down and told her those awful truths, it was because he had trusted she could survive it. But without him to bring out the fight in her, she didn't know if she could. It was taking every bit of her will not to drop to her knees and bury herself in the crook of his neck, begging him to hold onto her until she felt like herself again.
But that would be what she would do if she didn't care. If she was just doing as she pleased. So it was exactly the thing she couldn't do.
"Um, we have some blueberry, I think, and… oh, here's Clara!"
She breathed a sigh of relief, the motion from the back steps signifying her chance to withdraw before any further damage was done. She began to turn away when his voice caught her again.
"Abigail."
It was the grave, deep timbre that always ran straight through to her bones. The one he used when he was staring intently into her eyes from behind prison bars. The rasp of her name affected her against her will and she sucked in a breath.
Not now, she pleaded silently. Not here. I won't be able to stand it.
And easily as he always had, he understood. He cleared his throat, pulling his hand back from where it had somehow stretched forward.
"On second thought, I think this'll do it," he said, digging into his pocket. He had thrown twenty dollars on the table and was halfway to the door before the rest of the world came back in focus.
"Wait, your change!" she called.
"Not necessary," he said. With a brusque "good afternoon" and tip of his hat, he disappeared out the door.
ooo
Back in his office, Henry sank miserably into his chair. He could still see no path forward but he knew he couldn't stand much more of this, whatever new purgatory this was.
Ned had taken him into the storage room the day before and told him what had happened between Abigail and Florence. It had left him spitting with rage, but he doubted the widow Blakeley cared a whit what Henry Gowen would have to say on the subject. As Ned would just as soon stop him confronting her anyway, he didn't bother.
All of this left his restlessness simmering with nowhere else to go. He'd already unloaded anger or anguish onto everyone around save Abigail, who'd spent years bearing more of it than she deserved. But as he tossed papers around his desk, it occurred to him there was one place he had never been back to – not since he'd watched them close it up.
ooo
The gravestone told him that Noah's birthday had just passed. He wasn't sure he'd ever known Noah's birthday when he was alive. He and Abigail had generally avoided mention of him, and Henry wasn't the type to engage in idle chatter at the mine. It seemed another mark against him now, not to have known. To think of these details as "idle". The birthday etched next to Noah's, though, was one he did know. July 1893 to May 1910. Just shy of seventeen.
Turning back to where his foreman's name was etched, Henry lowered himself onto one knee, figuring the trouble of it was the least he could offer.
"I don't know what people are supposed to say when they do this," he started. "I know apologies won't get you and your boy out of the ground. But seems like maybe I owe you some sort of explanation, now that I've managed to get up the nerve."
He felt ridiculous. But if he couldn't be honest now, at the man's final resting place, then he wasn't worth a lick.
"I never had a chance of stopping it, is the thing. I was lying to you before I even realized they were lies. By the time I found my conscience, the rest of me was already gone.
"I'm not asking you to understand it. Though, since you loved her first, maybe you can. I just want you know that, unlike a lot of my other crimes, I didn't commit this one on purpose. I had no reason to undermine you. I respected you. You did fine work and raised a fine young man. You were a better father than I was. You were a better husband than I was. In fact, I can't think of a thing you weren't better at than I was, other than maybe pulling off a suit.
"You'd laugh in my face to hear me say it, but the truth is I do miss ya, Stanton. You were a good man, who shouldn't have died as you did. If I'd been a better man, you wouldn't have.
"I'm telling you all of this so you know that I know I don't deserve her. But I'd like to. I'm doing everything I can to be a man who would get your blessing if he asked for it. And maybe it's all too little, too late, but… well, she's too important not to try."
He waited, as though some response might come.
"Maybe I'm not supposed to say that, I don't know. If you were here, you'd probably punch me again," he smiled. "That's fair, I'd have it coming. If it's any consolation to you, I think your lady might punch me too, if I ever manage to say what I need to say to her. I'll bet she's got a mean right hook. I hope I'm that lucky, to ever see her mad at me again."
He picked at the blades of grass around the plot, his grin fading.
"I'm sorry I didn't fight harder. You'll never know how much it eats away at me. And that's fine, honestly… I'm glad you'll never know it. You deserve to rest well. Rest well knowing that she loved you, because she did. If she hadn't, it would have been easier to hurt you."
The sunlight shifted to cast Henry's hunched silhouette over the granite etching. Shadows covered the grass that swayed in front of the stone, and he shivered in the light breeze.
"Anyhow… I don't know how people say goodbye either. I've never done it especially well. Usually involves some sort of yelling, and we already had that goodbye," he shrugged. "So maybe what I can say instead, if it's okay with you, is that from now on, I'll make sure to remember your birthday."
He pressed a hand to his knee and struggled back up into his full height. His hat still in his hand, he tapped it lightly against both gravestones.
"Alright then, Stanton. Until we meet again."
ooo
Our Father, who art in Heaven…
Abigail recited the words, as she had countless times since that day she stood between Henry and her husband. Today's service was the first she had attended in Hope Valley since the scarlet letter of those sins had been stitched on her breast for all to see. Rather than cast her eyes around to determine the extent of the congregation's judgments of that new decoration, she kept her focus on the smooth wood of the pew in front of her, the hem of Faith's dress swaying slightly above the floor. Another visiting pastor had joined them that week - someone who would know nothing of the town's rumors and indignities. A stout, red-haired man with a booming voice, his large hands conducted their words, and Abigail lulled herself against the quiet drone of the repetition.
When the service had ended, she allowed Cody to run out ahead. She kissed him goodbye as he hurried to join the other children eager to loosen their ties and collars. They would all find some game to play until the sky turned dark and she wondered if there would ever come a time when she didn't feel that quick constriction in her heart at letting him go.
Her eyes followed Cody until the early spring sun had overtaken him. On their return, they caught Elizabeth's questioning look, who stood waiting for her in the aisle.
"You go on ahead," Abigail told her. "I'm not quite ready for the light yet."
It came out probably more melancholy than she had hoped, judging by how Elizabeth's face had creased and twisted.
"Are you sure?"
"Yes, I'm fine. I'll see you at the house," she said, pushing out a smile.
Elizabeth's departure left her alone in the pew, watching others drain out from the front rows. Slowly, the exodus uncovered the sight of the walls; the sign that read The Jack Thornton School became visible, hung where she had once placed it. The pastor behind his podium took no notice of it, of course – had no idea it was a dedication to another great and fallen man.
Would there ever come a time when Jack was forgotten in this town? Years and generations on, would his sign be taken down the way Noah's last words had been taken from the wall of the saloon, the memory of what it meant completely lost?
As mayor, she had overseen all sorts of changes in Hope Valley. But she had so rarely had occasion to actually stop and reflect on how little the current age of the town resembled the ghost of Coal Valley she had spent the past several months immersed inside.
Martha Green had long ago disappeared from the pew beside her. She would encounter no Dunbars, Noonans, or Millers on her walk home, all since moved away to where remarriage or work had taken them. And of course, there would be no Joe and no Paul. No Patrick, Tommy, or Liam. Even Reverend Anderson had come and gone. The sign on the wall reminded her that she was not even sitting in the same church-house.
Only a few of them yet remained, the stalwart keepers of the past. For the second time that week, she looked up to find Florence waiting in front of her, flush with contrition.
"Could we talk outside?"
They settled themselves on a bench at the rear of the building, the first signs of bloom just starting to make an appearance around them.
"Abigail, I owe you an apology," Florence started as soon as they'd sat. "And I know that I didn't give you a chance at an explanation when you first came back, but I hope that you'll find the grace to allow me one."
Abigail immediately shook her head. "Florence, you don't owe me either," she began.
"Well, you're going to get them anyway," Florence insisted, her tone brokering no argument. This time Abigail shut her mouth and nodded.
"I've always tried to be a good woman," Florence said, the words precise and brisk. "I served God and I served my husband, and I didn't take exception to the things asked of me in this earthly life. I truly wanted to do as I should, and walk a righteous path, and I still do."
She stopped here, taking a deep breath. A slight slump came into her shoulders as she looked down at her hands.
"But all of that trying was never good enough for Paul. He seemed to think there was an innate sin in me that nothing could rid me of. Not as a human, not as we all have, but as a woman. And of course he was hardest on me because I was the woman who reflected on him, and to whom he had chosen to show mercy. At least, some of the time." Florence cast her eyes down at this, and Abigail flinched, but said nothing. "But I loved him. I really did. His approval, if I could earn it, was like finally stepping into sunlight after a storm. I was torn apart when he died. It wasn't until later that I realized it was because I didn't think I was worthy of anything else."
"Oh, Florence…" Abigail breathed.
"It's nothing to dwell on now," Florence said, gently waving away her sympathies. "I've lost so much time to him already. But I didn't know how much of that I still held inside me until I hit you. I think what made me angriest was that you would run and separate yourself from us again. Like we were all right back there hiding from each other. We've all come so far but you still seem to think that your love and grace can only go in one direction."
It was still difficult to believe she deserved any of this despite Florence insisting the opposite. But to even be able to sit here and talk about these deepest of secrets with her friend, her beautiful friend, who had no idea how remarkable she was… Abigail grabbed the other woman's hand.
"You are the best of women, Florence," she spoke earnestly. "And the best of people. Do you know, you are one of the main reasons that my feelings for Henry never went beyond suspicion? Knowing how I would let you down, how you would rightfully cast me out… it stopped me so many times from screwing things up beyond repair. It saved my family, right up to the end. I could never thank you for that because I could never tell you, but Florence… you made every difference."
They threw themselves together, holding each other tight. Florence's arms were safe and warm and they melted the coverings from words she had yet to be able to say out loud.
"What you said, the other day? That I was doing as I pleased?" Abigail sniffled and swiped at her face, looking solemnly into Florence's. "I know it may have seemed that way, but part of my unhappiness back then was that I never did feel like I was doing as I pleased. I felt like a secondary consideration to everything in my own house - in my own life," she confessed.
"I never told Noah how lost and ignored I was feeling until we had a fight, the night before he died." She shook her head, remembering the terrible things she had said while the storm raged around them. "It felt wrong to blame him for my discontent with the world, so I just tried to make it all work and be happy that I had a good husband and a beautiful son. Even now, I'm not sure I can really blame Noah for how I resented it all. I think I just put them so far ahead of everything else that it was inevitable that I would be left behind."
Florence nodded, her own tears still falling into the lap of her dress.
"You know, I never thought about it, whether Paul was good enough for me. I just wanted to be good enough for Paul. I would never have wished for him to die, Abigail, I need you to understand that. But I have seen true love and respect since then. And God help me, sometimes I am grateful for the second chance."
Abigail pressed their tear-soaked temples together. Florence leaned in, her voice serious.
"Never tell anyone I said that."
"Now how could I, when you kept my secret all this time!?" Abigail cried. "My goodness, I still can't believe you did that."
"Well," Florence said, giving up the embrace, "I won't say I wasn't tempted. Paul did deserve that promotion."
Through all the darkness, they could not help but laugh.
