Chapter Text
The next morning I wake up to the first hint of daylight, Sarah asleep beside me. It’s disorientating to find myself here; still here or rather, still now. I try to think through the logic of time travel. If Vince and Dave do what they say and keep the letter, then Audrey should be reading it the day after I disappeared. Which means shortly after that she’ll be talking to Stuart Mosley and if she can talk him around then I should be back home. But would that mean I’d disappear from here as soon as Vince decided to keep the letter? Or will the amount of time I spend here be determined by how long it takes Audrey to talk Stuart around? Or, will I not be aware of returning at all; will the Trouble create a whole alternative branch of the timeline in which I live a whole life here that I’ll forget as soon as I return? Or could I even live a whole life here even as I’m also immediately snapped back to 2010 without even meeting Sarah?
I really have no way to know, which means, I realise with a sinking feeling, I have no way to tell if giving the letter to Vince worked. I could disappear any moment, or I could not disappear at all, and neither will really confirm anything. It’s also possible that my presence here has changed the timeline and something will happen which means Vince and Dave aren’t around in 2010, or the Herald’s offices could burn down, the letter up in smoke before anyone can read it.
I take a deep breath, realising that trying to work any of this out is pointless. I need to focus on what I can do . It makes sense to try and think of back-up strategies, additional routes of communication. There must be some way to get a message to Duke. I try to think of options besides Vince and Dave; what links do I know of between now and something that connects to Duke in the 2010s? I’m not sure exactly how old his boat is, but I think probably not this old. If I’d found myself in the later iteration of the Troubles in the 1980s when we were kids, it might be easier; I know where he lived then, I could find his father, but now, here in the 1950s …?
My concentration falters from the issue at hand and my thoughts turn to Duke. The Duke I knew as a kid and the times we were friends. The Duke I knew as a teenager and the times we were almost so much more than that. The Duke I’ve known as an adult and the ways we’ve fought. How muddled everything got. How much of that has been my fault. Being here, in Haven but not in Haven, somewhere where I feel at home but no one knows who I am, it’s giving me a break from myself. It’s allowing me to see Duke and our history more clearly, or at least to ask better questions about who he has been to me.
Sarah stirs beside me and I try to turn my thoughts back to the more practical question of how to get a letter to Duke in the 2010s. The answer comes to me a little later when we go to the cafe around the corner for breakfast. There’s a copy of this morning’s newspaper on the table as we sit down. I reach for it simply to move it out of the way, but as I do I notice two things in quick succession. An advert for Worldwide Post Delivery, and a name in an article about a bar fight. The first provides me with another route to send a letter home; a delivery company. However odd they might think a request to hold a letter for 54 years, they’ll probably still take the business, right? But pleased though I am to have formed that semblance of a plan, it’s a word higher up the page that really catches my attention; Crocker. And above that the words ‘bar fight’ and ‘killed’. When I settle down to read the article, I learn that bartender Roy Crocker was killed in a bar fight at the Shore Club and is survived by his wife and a young son named Simon. Duke’s grandfather was killed yesterday. Something about this sounds familiar; wasn’t Sarah supposed to have killed Duke’s grandfather? Have I changed the past already?
As we eat breakfast I show Sarah the article and ask if she knows any of these people or anything about what happened. She tells me again she knows no one here, and when she reads about Simon’s widow her only reaction is sympathy. Whatever reason Sarah might have had for killing Roy Crocker in another time, it’s clearly not present in this one. Or maybe she never killed him in any reality; maybe someone set her up or it got misreported or I’ve remembered wrong or … I take another deep breath. I can’t know. I can’t second guess every other timeline out there or every possibility for how things might be going wrong. I can only do what I can do.
I tell her I need to write another letter. She has to go to work, but she offers me not only more writing paper but also the use of her room while she’s out. Where would I be without her? “Thank you,” I tell her for what feels like the umpteenth time.
Back in her room alone, I sit down with pen and paper, and start to write;
Duke,
It's Nathan, writing from 1955
I think Stuart Mosley’s Trouble sent me here.
I begin with the obvious, Stuart Mosley's name and address, much the same as the details I put into the letter to Audrey. I tell him about that letter too, in case it gets through as well. Or in case it doesn't.
I could leave it at that, but I hesitate. It doesn't seem like enough, somehow. With Audrey, I guess it was different; professionally different. One cop to another.
But this is Duke . It seems like I should say more; one old friend to another. I’ve known him my whole life, and whether we’ve been friends or not, we’ve always been … something. Even the times when we weren’t speaking, we were still tied together by that decision to ignore each other.
It was easy to write something short and factual for Audrey; a briefing note for a co-worker. And, if I want, it should be simple enough to add more to it at some other point. For this mode of delivery (persuading a company that normally delivers letters as quickly as possible that they need to hold on to this one for more than half a century), that would be more complicated. I might never talk to Duke again, and that if there's anything I want to tell him it needs to be now.
Even so, I start with inconsequential things;
I met Gloria today; a nine year old tomboy with grass in her hair and mud on her knees, and every bit as fierce as the ME I remember.
Vince & Dave are just the same too. Perhaps just ever so slightly less cryptic and bitter, but really it's remarkable how little they'll change over the next half century.
Haven itself is hardly much different from the one we grew up in. Almost the same, yet just subtly and significantly different.
It makes me think about other things that might have been just a little bit different. Things like my childhood, or yours. Or, things like us.
As I write this, I don’t know whether I’ll make it back to my own time. I’ll try, but if I can’t then I’ll help Haven from here. Sarah is helping me, and Vince & Dave have extended me a cautious and begruding kind of trust.
Sarah is incredible. I guess we knew that, really, given her connection to Audrey. But the way that even without the benefit of police training she still sees right to the heart of a Trouble, it’s impressive.
So if I don’t make it back, I’ll be OK. But Audrey will need you more than ever.
I know you have feelings for her. I know she has feelings for you too. If I don’t make it back, I hope you comfort each other through the Troubles. If I do make it back - well then maybe that’s a more complicated question, but
I never hated you Duke. It was really more the opposite of that. I get so tangled up in my own feelings I can’t see my way through them. Maybe that much is obvious; perhaps it’s always been obvious to anyone who isn’t me that that’s what’s behind my Trouble. And that it wasn’t a co-incidence it was triggered during a fight with you. I got so tangled up, I couldn’t admit even to myself that I had feelings for you. That I have feelings for you.
It’s not until a tear hits the page that I realise I’m crying. It soaks into the paper and catches the end of that final u , spreading the ink like watercolour.
I put the pen down and rub at my face, annoyed with myself. It has hit me all at once that I might never see Duke again.
I miss Audrey every moment; my very situation a constant reminder this is a case I should be talking to her about. But her absence is softened by the presence of Sarah, and her loss bearable because I know that she knows how I feel about her; as a colleague, as a friend and as more than that too.
With Duke there is none of that certainty and everything is so much more complicated.
I know that a lot of that is my fault. And I have to face the possibility I’ll never have the opportunity to do anything about it. Countless mistakes I can never make good.
I look back down at the page, and after a while I pick up the pen.
I’m sorry Duke. There are so many things I could have done better. If I could go back in my own life - in our lives - I’d do the whole thing differently.
But that’s not the kind of Trouble I ran into, and here we are. So I’ll do my best to get home, and I’ll do my best to help Haven from here.
Today’s Herald records the death of one Roy Crocker, survived by his wife and a son called Simon. I know I should be trying to stay out of the timeline, to not make a difference, to make sure everything stays the same. And if I’m only here for a few days then maybe that’s possible. But if I’m here for good I can’t live my whole life like that.
I don’t yet know how or what I’ll be able to do. But if I’m still here in a few weeks, I’ll do what I can to help the Crocker family. Perhaps I can do something to make sure Roy’s grandson has a better, a fairer, an easier start in life.
If I can get more letters to you I will, but it might just be this one. I don’t know how many strange requests to hold something for 54 years Worldwide Post Delivery can cope with. Look after yourself Duke, and look after Audrey. Look after each other, for me.
And look after Haven too; I know you will.
Nate.
When I've finished writing I sit and stare at it for ages. I’ve written more than I intended to. Dare I actually send this? Dare I not ?
After a while it occurs to me that if I succeed in that goal of making Duke’s childhood a little easier, then the man who opens this letter might not be quite the same one I know, and the history between us might be entirely different. Would it be better? Could it be worse? How much am I changing my own life if I stop Simon from beating his son?
I shake my head to myself, trying to clear it of these impossible questions. They are unanswerable and I can only do so much. I have to do something to get a message to Duke, to tell them what’s happened to me and to tell them … Well, to tell them what’s in this letter.
There is only so much I can do. Hopefully this will be enough.