“I want you to swear we’ll never be like these men. Benny and Jonathan, Ray and Tony. Growing apart.”
“Of course we won’t be!” Jem said. “How could you think that?”
“Friendship is a kind of power balance,” Merinda said, studying Jem.
“Merinda, you are making very little sense.”
“It requires being completely, selfishly happy for someone even if they step ahead and leave you behind.”
“I’m not leaving you behind, Merinda.”
“All I have heard from DeLuca and from Benny are strings of how they thought things would turn out differently. How if they had only said one thing or done another… if they could turn back the clock. Jem, that won’t be us. It can’t be us.”
“How are you frightened of something that hasn’t shown the slightest sign of happening?”
“Besides, we are narrowing in on our Moriarty,” Merinda said. “Just as you are going to be at home raising babies.”
“Tertius Montague.” Jem couldn’t keep disdain from shadowing her voice, adhering to the first part of Merinda’s sentence and not the latter.
It appeased her friend. Merinda prattled on about the mayor and the puppet strings that kept his marionettes bouncing. If he had a connection to these bombs and explosives, who could they trust? Where were their allies? There was a tarnished surface on their glistening city.
Jem half listened, watching shadows web through the rustling curtains as the breeze funneling through the open window flounced them. She took an old, tarnished watch from her pocket. Its familiar tick was as natural to her as a heartbeat. Its circumference and chain as familiar to her as her own skin. It tingled memories across the sensors in Jem’s fingers as she gently pried it open. She knew its interior too, its face and composition. On the right, an assuredly ticking watch face, and on the left, a photograph of Viola and Luca, one that never quite fit the watch’s circumference. This photograph, this past that Ray had kept close to his heart, was impressed in Jem’s memory. It was a token transferred when he used the selfsame gift in their harried proposal, transferring his faith and hope for their future to her waiting hand.
Now the picture was gone. In its stead was a picture of Jem—a shot from one of their first features in the Hog. The night of the election benefit, she recalled, recognizing the scalloped collar of her dress and the costume pearls she had secured from the trunk in Merinda’s attic.
She snapped the watch shut with a smile. She unconsciously slid a hand over her midsection, wondering if she had felt a slight flutter.
“You’re quiet, Jemima,” Merinda said from her chair by the hearth.
“I’m fine,” she replied, matching Merinda’s tone even as her heart somersaulted. “And you?” She studied her friend in the waning light.
“Of course.” Merinda was hiding something in her voice that was half elated and half longing, with just a dusting of worry over its resolve. “I’m always fine.”
Jem lowered into the chair opposite her friend. “Of course.” She smiled at Merinda with all of her might, feeling that flutter again and the watch ticking in her breast pocket and the smile stretching lips so wide she wondered if she would ever stop smiling. No matter the hiccups or interruptions in her otherwise perfect ever-after. “We are both fine.”
* * *
*During these moments, Jem’s cheeks were starting to hurt from all her smiles at Merinda’s tale of her first enraptured kiss. (Not to mention Merinda’s description of Benny’s splendid appearance in his red serge.)
AUTHOR’S NOTE
You can’t be Reverend Gerald McMillan’s daughter and not have a working knowledge of the history of the Force. My dad’s extensive collection of memorabilia, uniforms (from all eras), and incredible library were essential in infusing the spirit of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police into this world along with my own fictional touch. Of course, I had to use the famous Mountie Samuel Benfield Steele from my own hometown of Orillia, Ontario!
Much of Benny and Jonathan’s Guide to the Canadian Wilderness was inspired by the 1909 Rules and Regulations of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police. I also consulted Without Fear, Favour or Affection by Vernon Kemp, which provided a clear understanding of life as an early recruit. Wearing snowshoes backward was one of the ways in which Albert Johnson (the Mad Trapper of Rat River) evaded capture by the indefatigable efforts of an RCMP manhunt in the Yukon in 1932.