No additional warnings for this scene.
P.1
My Dear Friend,
I miss you. Thank you for the postcard, it's timing was fortuitous and your message was received. I understand your duty, but guard yourself and remember that friends wait for you here.
Sincerely,
B. Fraser (and Dief)
~~~~~~~~
P.24
My Dear Friend,
I am sorry I was not able to write to you yesterday, as I normally do. We were on a case involving illegial produce which severely taxed my skills as a tracker and I was simply too tired to put pen to paper. It resolved satisfactorily, in no small part to the stubborn determination of my partner. He is a unique individual whom you would get along well with. He is rather unorthodox, as you so often are, and has the same streak of protectiveness as you. I wonder at my abilities that my partners develop a pathological need to watch over me so closely...I'm sure it is well intentioned. In any case, after an awkward period of adjustment, we are settling into a comfortable partnership.
Honestly, I did not mean to write you as often as I have, but I miss our discussions. I miss you, quite frankly. I have no need to hide those feelings here, and I only wish...well that is neither here nor there. You are missed.
Sincerely,
B.F. (and Dief)
~~~~~~~~~
P.28
My Dear Friend,
I wonder about you often. As time slips by and Welsh informs me yet again, "no word", I fear for your safety. Yet I console myself in the fact that no news is good news, and wait patiently for your return. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, as they say, and I find my own longing for your companionship a palpable pain. Where are you? What are you doing? Do you miss me at all? And I sink into pure maudlin sentimentalism, and Dief accuses me of sulking (which is malarkey). My partner is stubborn and difficult, at times, in ways that you are not. We cannot talk about you, of course, for obvious reasons, but even so I doubt he would want to hear my worries and regrets. He has his own difficult romantic entanglements, which
I did not mean to imply you and I are in a difficult romantic entanglement. Or romantic, at all; and I am confusing the issue, here. I only meant that he is distracted by a woman from his past whom he still cares for, in my opinion unduly. Which, pot calling kettle, and I do not mean to bring up negative memories but then what more do I have to offer, I wonder? Times of pain and betrayal, cases where I frustrated you and ruined your clothes, that absurd trip North that only revealed to me how much I had done to test your friendship. How much I damaged your trust in me, and yet you followed, and carried me when I was injured, and -
Dear Lord, I'm babbling.
BF
~~~~~~~~~
P.42
My Dear Friend,
I had no idea. I did not know...even as I sat in that ridiculous submarine and fought with my father and my partner, I did not know. Our partnership was salvaged and God am I so ignorant? How could I not see what he feels for me? How could I not know the emotions he brings out in me?
Have I betrayed you? How could I, if we parted solely as friends? My life could not be complete without him, and yet I feel fractured with you gone. I don't know.
Are you safe?
Sincerely,
BF
~~~~~~~~~
P.58
My Friend,
Time shifts and settles. I settle with my partner -- in work, as in my life, and my bed -- but I am restless. Change is on the wind and even my father's ghost is restless. I look back on my many letters to you and realize that I began writing of him as if you knew I saw him and talked to him, and I wonder if maybe you did. Now I wonder if you'll ever know. In the darkest part of night, sometimes I wake with the certain knowledge that I will never see you again. That you are gone. Even that you are already dead, and the authorities simply do not want the fact known as yet. All these terrible fears of what is or might be, but yet nothing changes the fact that you are not here, have not been here, and will likely return long after I have left.
Home calls to me. I don't know what I will do, if my partner does not choose to follow. He loves Chicago because it is his home, for the same reasons I love Canada. Which will he choose? I hardly consider myself much of a prize. It was easy enough for you to leave.
Selfishly, I have raged into the wind about you, to my shame. I see you around every corner, and think you are hiding in shadows. I've imagined the most maudlin reunions over these long months without you, but now I wonder what I could possibly say should I actually open a door and see you there. My happiness at your safe return would be genuine, I hope you don't doubt that, but it would be tinged with sadness. Even if you come home now it will only be to find me leaving...for home. All the time I could have had by your side has been lost to time and circumstance.
I am grateful for the love and passion I was given in your stead, and yet my petty heart is still bitter over you. I am childish in the ways of love...and I loved you, Ray Vecchio. I love you still. And Ray, my Ray, deserves better than this.
As I seem to leave nothing but wreckage and broken hearts (mine, or others') in my wake, it seems past time for me to move on. You won't even know I've gone, and he won't follow.
BF
~~~~~~~~~
P.59
Ray,
You told me to get my man, and I did. Muldoon has been captured, and I am home. It was so good to see you, to end our partnership on a note of trust and brotherly affection. Apropos to all the time we did not spend together, all of these letters I could never send you, all the love you will never know I carried for you. A good partnership, to end so well.
Sincerely,
Benton
Fraser held the book over the fire, pulled it back, then held it over the flames again. Dief watched him, curious at his mood, and displeased. It was nothing he could explain to the aging wolf, in any case.
He got up and gathered the fine paper envelope and invitation, postmarked Florida, and tucked it inside the book's jacket. He put the book back on the bookself, where it sat for all of five minutes before he took it back out, and held it to the flames again, only to once more pull it back so he could open the invitation and reread the short note Ray had put inside of it.
Benny,
Ma never got over me getting divorced again, and I sure never could explain it while she was alive. But now she's gone, God rest her soul, and I won't be breaking her heart, and it's time for me to own up and live my own life before I'm 50. Who knew, right? I bet Kowalski -- the original, not my ex-wife -- is going to yuck it up over this so keep him in line for me, huh? Anyway here it is, the invitation to my committment ceremony to Jason McPherson. You'd like him, Benny; real outdoorsman, takes me hikes all over the swamps down here.
Maybe now my secret's out of the closet (ha ha) you and your partner can come down to Florida and visit me and my partner! I bet you never would have guessed, huh? Crazy world. I should have told you, especially after you married Kowalski up there in freezerland, but well...like I said, the time never seemed right. Hey, you know I had a crush on you back in the day? Don't tell Stanley, he'll try to drown me in my pool. Ha! I hope you can make it, okay? It would mean a lot to me.
Fraser folded it up and put it back into the invitation, and the invitation into the book, and the book at last to the fire.
When Ray got home from coaching youth hockey at the cultural center, he saw the remains in the fire and asked him what it was. Fraser told him that is was simply an old journal from his youth. Ray studied him closely, but Fraser drew him into his arms and assured him that it was just a weather book, marking the change in winds and temperature from years ago.
It was nothing important.