Love in Vain 1/3
by LeeF

Summary: Nick follows up on a personal ad addressed to "Nicholas Knight,
formerly of the Metropolitan Toronto Police or someone who knows of his
whereabouts" and catches up on the past.

Characters and situations upon which this story is based belong to James
Parriot, Sony Tristar et al, except for "Ellen Price", who is my
creation. Permission to archive at Fkfic-l and the FTP websites.
Others, please e-mail for permission.

Thanks to beta readers Rosemary, Cousin Bob and Jaime.



This was how it started.

He had been marking exams (and shaking his head at some of his students'
grasp of history) when a newspaper dropped onto his mahogany desk, just
missing a stack of papers.

"I think there is something you should look at in the personals,"
Lacroix said quietly. "I was almost not going to show it to you at all
but -  he shrugged  - "I thought you should know."

Nick Knight - now Professor Nicholas de Brabant of the Humanities
Department at McGill University - put down his red pencil and sighed.

"Lacroix, the students' marks need to be in to the office by 5 p.m.
tomorrow. I don't have time for any of your freaky "I want to be a blood
donor" ads right now."

"Don't knock it till you've tried it, Nicholas. Where do you think some
of the club's private stock comes from? Janette and I work very hard to
procure a variety of vintages for our immortal customers who want the
real thing - not another blood substitute cocktail. And some of the
donors are very charming." Lacroix leered. He was very proud that
Shadows was an even bigger success than the Raven.

The older vampire crossed the book-lined study to a loden green leather
armchair in the corner, removed the pile of papers on the seat to the
floor and sat down.

"Read the paper, Nicholas. A black bordered box about halfway down the
page in the personals column."

Nick sighed again, recognizing that his "father" would give him no peace
until he read the ad. He read aloud.

"Nicholas Knight, formerly of the Metropolitan Toronto Police or someone
who knows of his whereabouts, please contact Ellen Price at 613-225-9990
regarding a personal matter."

"Do you know an Ellen Price? Was she someone you worked with in Toronto?
Or maybe an old case?" Lacroix's curiosity was almost palpable as he
spoke.

Toronto. Nick cast his thoughts back 28 years to another life as a
Homicide detective. He didn't think about the recent past much anymore;
it held too many bad memories of dead partners and lost love. He
preferred to think about other pasts in other countries. His lectures on
European history were among the most popular in the university, despite
being night courses that presumably cut into the social life of his
students, some of whom did hang out at Shadows.

Toronto. Schanke. Tracy. Natalie. Now the memories sliced into his mind
like a knife through a wedding veil. Souvlaki loving Schanke with the
bad jokes and the loyal heart. Tracy, who had been on her way to
becoming a fine detective. And Natalie, his mortal love who had tried to
help him become human again and disappeared. He could've joined her in
the sweet hereafter if Lacroix had done what he was supposed to do. But
nothing turned out right that night in the loft. Lacroix merely whacked
his errant son on the head with the walking stick then picked up the
unconscious Natalie and flew off. He marched into emergency at St.
Michael's and literally dropped her on an empty stretcher. He then
grabbed a passing intern by the throat - the poor man had only come to
investigate the fuss - and ordered a blood transfusion before vanishing
into the darkness.

Lacroix never explained his actions. He thought he was above that. Nat
lived. So did Nick. But the relationship was never the same afterwards.
As some wag said once: the fall doesn't hurt but the end is simply
smashing.

Natalie stood by him during the investigation into Tracy's death and
that of the perp who killed her. Commissioner Vetter wanted blood and
only Nick's excellent case clearance and numerous citations saved him
from walking the beat around Yonge and Dundas as a constable. Nat and he
never discussed that night in the loft. Nick tried once but she started
to cry so he stopped and just held her.

A few days after Internal Affairs cleared him of wrongdoing, Nat told
him she was going away on vacation for a week or so. No, make that a
month. Chief coroner's orders. She produced a glossy brochure from
Sunquest out of her purse and showed him photos of glowing sunsets,
picture-perfect beaches with sand like sugar, tanned couples toasting
each other with colourful drinks. I need the sun, Nick, she said simply.
It's been too dark in Toronto. I need to get away from here, think away
from here. Away from me, he said. When are you leaving? Nick, she said
quietly and touched his cheek. I'm leaving tomorrow afternoon. Just hold
me. So he leaned back into the chesterfield taking her with him,
stroking her chestnut curls and feeling the long slow slide of her
tears, like drops of blood, run down his neck and past his heart. When
she fell asleep, he eased her onto the chesterfield and went rummaging
about in his bedroom closet.

The gold locket was large, oval and expensive, with an engraving of two
entwined roses on the lid. He had purchased it from a jeweller on High
Street in London, England for a charming conquest 140 years ago then
forgot about it until a few months ago. Now his fingernail moved the
tiny clasp and the locket popped open, revealing a diminutive photo of
Nat and him. He had planned to give it to Nat on her birthday.

Downstairs she was still sleeping peacefully.  He slipped it into her
purse beside the Caribbean brochure he could not stand looking at. Then
Nick picked up the slumbering Natalie and took her upstairs to his bed.
She sighed a bit and moved onto her side. He pulled the down comforter
over them both and pressed against her, slipping his arm around her warm
waist. Natalie, my dearest, he whispered and kissed her cheek.
Eventually her even breathing lulled him to sleep. It was the last time
he ever saw her again.

The week Nat was due to return, he was still wrestling with a nasty case
involving a serial strangler hunting drug-addled hookers downtown. Even
Captain Reese couldn't keep Commissioner Vetter off his back.

"That man is going to crucify you if you don't come up with something
soon," Reese told him sympathetically. Nick winced a bit at the mental
picture.

"Something'll break soon, I'm sure of it," he told his boss, glancing at
the calendar. "Umm, what day is it?"

"Knight, I think you need a vacation. It's Friday."

Friday! Nat should've returned two days ago, Nick thought. But there
were no messages waiting for him at his desk or on the answering machine
when he got home. Puzzled, Nick tried calling her number. It was
disconnected. A rising tide of dread rose inside him. But it wasn't
until he stood on her balcony and saw different furnishings and a
strange man beyond the French doors that the tide engulfed him. He
forgot that he had once planned to leave her without a word, during the
Black Buddha affair. He only saw that she had left him. Natalie, he
whispered, Natalie.

For a while he just turned wild, running through partners like a scythe
cuts through grass. Nobody wanted to work with him. Reese fruitlessly
tried to cajole and calm then finally threatened him with suspension. By
then, everyone knew that Natalie had left town for parts unknown. And
the whispers around the division said that Nick Knight was either having
a nervous breakdown or was about to have one. No surprise what with his
old partner dead, the investigation that followed and Commissioner
Vetter breathing down Knight's neck with this high profile strangler
case. And now his girlfriend gone without a good-bye note. She never
booked that Caribbean vacation; it was a red herring. She had resigned
three weeks before her supposed vacation, just working her notice period
out of courtesy.  The rumours jumped back and forth. But nobody knew the
truth. Everyone was sympathetic but no one knew what to say or do.

Reese finally ordered Nick to take a vacation. Nick spent it walking the
streets in a grubby pair of jeans and a black leather jacket, slipping
in and out of the darkness. He watched the dealers around Kensington
Market and the hookers on Parliament St. And waited. The waiting paid
off when he followed a blue Nissan that picked up a bushy-haired blonde
prostitute in pink glitter spandex and Candies shoes. All the other dead
girls had been blonde too.

The car parked in an alley behind a Vietnamese restaurant and the girl's
neon hair dipped out of sight. Hidden in the shadows, Nick waited,
vampire senses alert. Just as the strangler tightened his fingers on the
hooker's throat, he moved in. The window exploded as Nick grabbed the
startled guy and yanked him out backwards.

Eyes ablaze with gold, fangs gleaming, he snarled, "Your killing days
are numbered, asshole" and tossed him towards the wall. The man gasped
and slid slowly down the bricks into the garbage bin.

 Nick turned to the hooker.

"You're that vampire guy, what's his name, Dracula" she told him
succinctly then promptly passed out. Nick laughed harshly then reached
for his cell phone to call for a patrol car.

He caught the strangler. None of it mattered. For three days he didn't
answer his phone, didn't go to the station, just paced the floor and
guzzled down the bottles in his fridge. When he finally did make an
appearance, rumpled and unshaved, a grim Captain Reese led him silently
into his office and shut the door to curious eyes.

"Congratulations on catching the killer, Nick, but that's not enough to
save your butt. There's no easy way to say this. You disobeyed a direct
order and gave Vetter a reason to fry you for breakfast." Reese stared
down at his large hands helplessly. He'd come dangerously close to
insubordination himself for trying to defend Nick yesterday in the
Commissioner's office. "You can either resign quietly or be fired. Those
are my orders, Nick. I'm sorry. "

"I understand, Captain. It's not your fault," Nick replied quietly. He
felt emotionless as he dropped his detective's shield and .38 caliber
Smith and Wesson on Reese's desk. The gun fell with a loud thud and
Reese winced.

"Nick, I'm sorry," he repeated.

"It's OK," Nick said and left the office, closing the door softly behind
him. He looked neither left nor right, just headed straight out of the
building.

Later, at the loft, he found a few strands of her chestnut hair on the
arm of the chesterfield and started to cry. Wrapping them around his
finger, he whispered savagely, "Natalie, my dear, I hope God has damned
you like he's damned me."

"Strong words, my dear Nicholas. Terrible words." Lacroix emerged from
the shadows to put a hand on his son's shoulder. "Now you finally
understand that 'never the twain shall meet'. Your foolish quest for
mortality has caused all this needless suffering. Come back to us. Come
back to the community where you belong. Janette is waiting for us in New
Orleans. Your job is gone. Natalie is gone. She is never coming back to
you. Accept that and let her get on with her life, such as it is. You
get on with yours. Come back with me, Nicholas. This life has ended.
Another is waiting."

Nick swiped a sleeved arm across his wet eyes. Lacroix was right. The
last ray of sunshine in his life had passed with Natalie. The dream of
mortality was mere smoke and ashes.

"All right," he said, choking out the words.

End Part 1

Comments? E-mail cfarrell@sympatico.ca


Love in Vain 2/3
by LeeF

Disclaimer in part 1.

For awhile the three of them criss-crossed Europe, the Caribbean and the
North American continent. At first, Nick spent his time looking for
Natalie and as each lead turned cold, sought solace in bottles of
blood-laced wine. This alarmed Janette but Lacroix counseled patience.
Time heals all wounds and vampires, unlike mortals, have time on their
side, he said. He was right. Still, Nick had to work at banishing
Natalie from his thoughts. The time came when he thought of Natalie less
and less. Eventually she became a dream figure that belonged to another
life, appearing occasionally in his daytime slumbers, sometimes in her
coroner scrubs, sometimes in a slinky red gown and sometimes,
disturbingly, with a blond haired baby in her arms. He never mentioned
his dreams to Lacroix or Janette. They never asked.

About four years ago the family decided to settle in Montreal for
awhile. There was already an established vampire community there and
Janette liked the cosmopolitan lifestyle, both French enough and modern
enough to please her. She and Lacroix got back into the nightclub
business and tried to recruit Nick as a bartender. He passed on that and
with updated fake credentials, got a job teaching an evening course on
the rise of modern Europe at McGill University. Now he taught three
undergraduate courses.

Lacroix's voice broke into Nick's reverie. "Do you know an Ellen Price?"

"No," Nick replied. "But I will call this number tomorrow and find out
what she wants."  He turned back to the pile of exams as Lacroix quietly
let himself out, wondering if he did do the right thing.

Seven minutes shy of three a.m., Nick faxed the exam marks to the
Humanities department. Just for good measure, he also e-mailed them to
the departmental secretary, Gloria. He thought briefly about doing an
internet search for the mysterious Ellen Price but his eyes throbbed in
rhythm with the pounding of his head. The big four-poster bed beckoned
next door. He quickly peeled off his clothes, hoped Janette didn't
wander in for an early morning romp and sank gratefully into the
designer sheets. In minutes, he fell asleep.

And dreamed.

In his dream, he was back in Toronto, but not the familiar night-time
city with its gaudy street lights and sharp shadows. This dream-city was
awash with the full-bodied light of day. And there he was with Schanke,
wolfing down souvalki and dripping tzatziki sauce at Mr. Greek's on the
Danforth. Cheering Tracy on as she rounded the bases at the Metro Police
Charity Picnic. Then the scene shifted to passion in the Caddie's
backseat with Natalie and again in his bed at the loft. When they
finally broke apart, Nat rolled on her side to face him. I've conceived,
Nick, she told him, moving onto her back and flipping back the covers.
They both watched as her abdomen slowly began to expand. Nick placed his
hand on her growing belly. It's a girl, Nat, he said. Nick's eyes flew
open. Ellen, he whispered. Natalie.

He'd introduced himself over the phone as Nick Knight's nephew,
authorized to act on his behalf. No, his uncle was in a retirement home
in Mont-Royal and too ill to travel.

Well, how do I know you're really his nephew, she queried.

You'll know when you see me, he replied.

Well, if you're some sort of con artist, you're out of luck, bucko; this
isn't some big inheritance; it's just a letter my mother wanted me to
deliver to Mr. Knight, if he could be found. Now M. de Brabant, can you
prove to me that your uncle knew my mother Sydney Lamb-Price?

He took a deep breath and expelled it slowly. Ms. Price, I think we both
know your mother's real name was Natalie Lambert. Sydney was the name of
a pet cat she had and once upon a time she was a coroner in Toronto.
That's how she met my uncle. He was a homicide detective.

There was silence on the other end for a moment. When she spoke again,
her voice lost its mild belligerence. I'll give you my address, she
said. Could you come on Saturday?

Ellen Price lived on the 15th floor of a high-rise on Woodroffe Avenue
in Canada's capital. What a boring city Ottawa is, Janette told Nick
with a sniff when she found out where he was going, even the vampires
there are dull. Politics, pshaw! You haven't been there in a hundred
years, Lacroix said and told Nick of a vampire who had actually run for
office as a Member of Parliament. Placed second, Lacroix chortled. And
what would you know about politics, Janette retorted, you don't even
vote. Do you even know what party is in power? Nick barely listened to
the argument that ensued. He knew it was staged for his benefit,
anything to distract him from the dark thoughts that crowded in, one
after another.

Natalie was dead. Breast cancer, Ellen told him over the phone. She
spoke without a quiver in her voice; she had had some time to get used
to it. Her mother had been battling breast cancer for two years before
she succumbed. But before she died she got her affairs in order and made
Ellen promise to look for an old friend, a Toronto homicide detective
named Nick Knight. Ellen had been putting ads in all the major Canadian
and European dailies for two months.

It's a good thing your uncle finally saw it, M. de Brabant, that was the
last week I planned to run the ad. Yes, a good thing, Nick agreed
grimly. Telling himself Natalie was mortal and would've die someday
didn't matter. He ached.

Now here he was, knocking on the door of Ellen Price's unit. He braced
himself as it opened. Please don't look like Nat, he begged silently.

"My God!" The woman in the doorway did a comic double-take. "You weren't
kidding when you said I'd know you were Nick Knight's relation. You're
the spitting image of the man in the pictures! I can't believe it!"

She continued to stare as she ushered him into her home. Ellen Price had
her mother's luxurious hair but she was tall and boyishly shaped,
lacking her parent's more generous proportions. A pair of plum coloured
glasses perched at the end of her nose. She wore jeans and a navy blue
Carleton University sweatshirt. Nick guessed her age at about 25 years
old. He hoped the charcoal coloured Hugo Boss suit he wore made a good
impression.

"Please have a seat, M. de Brabant. Would you like something to drink,
coffee or herbal tea, perhaps? I was just about to brew myself a cup
when you knocked."

Nick declined. As she busied herself in the kitchen, he looked around
the room. Above the overstuffed beige chesterfield hung a huge and
colourful patchwork wall hanging of a cityscape. A coffee table book of
Impressionist paintings rested on an marbleized cream parson's table and
a combination cabinet/bookshelves held the TV and reading material. Nick
looked in vain for personal photos.

"M. de Brabant, please sit."

Ellen set down a wicker tray with a cup of steaming peppermint tea and a
plate of homemade almond cookies on it. She looked a little disappointed
when he declined a cookie. Nut allergy, he explained. Tell me about your
mother. She bit slowly into a cookie, considering her reply.

"I guess Mom was something of a mystery woman. She had no family but us
and she never talked about the past before she came to Kapuskasing -
that's up in Northern Ontario."

Nick cursed silently. He never considered looking north. Nat always said
she disliked the cold and snow. How hard it must have been for her to
live there all those years!

"My father, Brandon Price, was a doctor and even though she hadn't
practiced medicine on live bodies for some time, he welcomed her into
his office. And I guess she could still practice her trade there, I mean
there were always snowmobile accidents and people running into moose...
For Dad it was love at first sight but it took him three years to
persuade her to marry him and even then I think she only did it because
I was on the way. My brother Nicholas was born five years after me."

"Nicholas."  He tried not to bite his lip and clenched his fist instead.

Ellen looked at him curiously, trying to fathom the sting of emotion she
sensed but couldn't understand. She settled for another sip of tea and
continued her story.

"Like I said, Mom was something of a mystery. She often wore this
beautiful gold locket but if someone asked what it contained, she'd say
she couldn't open it because the lock was stuck. And she had this metal
box that she always kept locked but sometimes she'd go through it when
Dad wasn't around. Nick and I would hear her cry. One night when she and
Dad were out, my brother and I sneaked into their bedroom. He was
looking for Christmas presents but I thought I'd play Nancy Drew. The
locket was lying on the dresser so I opened it, expecting to find a
picture of my dad or maybe me and my brother. But it was a blond man I'd
never seen before with my mother. I thought he was very good looking,
much better looking than my dad."

Ellen looked at Nick under veiled lashes and blushed.

"How old were you?" he asked, wondering if Nat's daughter was flirting
with him. The thought made him squirm inwardly.

"About 11 years old. I took a nail file and jimmied open the trunk. The
trunk is in my office now so it's all fresh in my memory." At Nick's
questioning look, she added, "I'm a graphic designer, I work out of my
home. There were cards, including one with a loving message from your
uncle, some pressed flowers, a diary belonging to someone named Laura
Haines and a lab journal of my mother's about some experiments she did
on a subject K. There were some family photos of Mom with an older
couple - her parents I imagine and a man I took to be her brother. Mmmm,
a few photos of Mom and a little girl and a set of studio photos of her
and your uncle. Some other odds and ends."

Nick remembered the photos. Nat had won a free sitting in a raffle for a
women's shelter and persuaded him to join her. It wasn't a big deal,
just a department store studio. The photographer thought they were
lovers so posed them appropriately: one with Nick's hands on her
shoulders, another with her head on his shoulder and their arms around
each other and a final shot of them holding hands and looking into each
other's eyes. Neither of them had bothered to correct the photographer's
assumption.

"I didn't know what to think." Ellen's eyes were far away and Nick could
almost see the bewildered little girl she must have been. "I threw
everything back into the box, grabbed Nicky and hustled him out of the
room. Of course, my mother guessed what happened; I'd scratched the box
when I jimmied it open. At first she was furious but my father calmed
her down. My father was a very kind and patient man, M. de Brabant, he
loved her more than she ever did him. If she ever loved him," Ellen said
with a trace of bitterness.

"What happened next?" Nick asked gently. He didn't want the bewildered
little girl to surface again.

"I had all these questions. Who were those people in the pictures? How
come she never talked about them? Mom sat Nick and me down in the living
room and explained that she used to be a coroner in Toronto before she
moved north and that her family were all dead. The blond man was someone
she cared about but they couldn't be together. I always figured that
there was some romantic tragedy behind that story." Ellen looked at him
questioningly. When Nick stayed silent, she continued, "Or maybe she was
just another fool who fell for a married man who wouldn't leave his
wife. Mom never told, not even when she was on her deathbed."

"Your mother wasn't a fool," Nick said, a trifle hotly. "My uncle spoke
of her in the best of terms," he added weakly. "And no, he wasn't
married when he knew your mother. I have no idea what kept them apart."

"Maybe he was impotent," Ellen remarked baldly then reddened at her
rudeness. "Or perhaps an illness," she hastily added.

If you only knew, Nick thought. He felt unbearably depressed. It didn't
sound like the marriage was a particularly happy one for Nat or her
husband. He hoped her children made up for that in some way. Mea culpa,
he thought miserably. Mea culpa.

"Mom said she wanted to be cremated. Nick, Dad and I scattered her ashes
at a lake where we had a cottage. Mom just loved it there. She said the
air was so clean and pure. She loved to cross country ski in the winter
and fish with Nick and Dad in the summer. She and I would pick berries
and go for nature walks in the bush." Ellen smiled at the memory and
Nick felt relieved. She wasn't a totally bitter woman, no matter what
her view of her parents' marriage.

Natalie's daughter excused herself and disappeared down the hall,
presumably to her office. When she returned, she held a ivory coloured
envelope and a photo in a plain brass frame.

"I thought you might like to see this," Ellen said. "I took it up at the
cottage last summer. It was the last picture I ever took of Mom." She
sniffed a bit.

The three people in the photo were laughing and holding up a large fish
- a trout Nick guessed. His eyes quickly slid past the man with Natalie
- a big balding red-haired man then stopped at the younger man who
looked about twenty and so much like Natalie with the heart-shaped face
and big eyes he had to be her son Nick. Then his eyes moved to her.
Natalie wore a pink T-shirt with the slogan "I am woman; hear me roar!"
on it, a pair of faded jeans and a Toronto Blue Jays baseball cap.
Despite a plumpness around her hips, overall she still looked trim. His
vampire eyes could detect the threads of gray in her shoulder-cropped
hair and the fine lines around her eyes, betraying her age.

"Nice picture," he told Ellen, because something was expected of him.
"Your mother was a lovely woman." Oh Nat.

"That she was," Ellen agreed then gave him the envelope with "Nick
Knight" written on it in Nat's handwriting. The envelope was sealed.
Attached to it was a business card.

"I thought perhaps your uncle could contact me when he's feeling better.
I would love to hear stories about my mother when she was younger. I'm
sure my brother would like to hear them too."

Inwardly cringing, Nick firmly squelched that hope.

"I'm sorry Ms. Price, but the doctors suspect my uncle is suffering the
beginnings of Alzheimer's disease. His mind fades in and out. But he's
lucid at times. I'll make sure he gets the letter."

"Oh, I'm sorry," Ellen said, clearly disappointed. She opened her mouth
to say something else but Nick quickly shook her hand and said he had a
train to catch. He couldn't stand being there any longer with Natalie's
daughter, reminding him that Natalie was gone.

End Part 2

Comments? E-mail cfarrell@sympatico.ca


Love in Vain 3/3
by LeeF

Disclaimers in part 1

A goblet of blood wine at his elbow, Nick sat watching the flames leap
and dance in the fireplace.  The Waterford crystal was untouched, the
ivory envelope still unopened. He didn't even hear Janette enter the
room until she spoke.

"Nicolai, I hate to see you like this. Lacroix is at Shadows, searing
patrons with overly sarcastic wit and snapping at the bartender. It's
not good for business. He wishes he never showed you the ad."

"Do you wish that too?" Nick asked.

"You forget, I know what it is like to love a mortal. Lacroix also - "

"Lacroix!" Nick said sourly. "That was merely an infatuation on his part
with Fleur, an infatuation as transitory as flowers in the spring."

Janette wisely said nothing.

"She said whatever happens she wanted us to be together and I agreed.
Maybe I should've brought her across, Janette. Maybe I'm still angry
that she left me before I could leave her. I don't know anymore now."

"That's all in the past now," Janette said soothingly. "Both of our
mortal loves are dead and gone. We go on, Nicholai. I think you should
open the letter and face up to whatever it says, whether it be words of
love and forgiveness or words of reproach and bitterness. Or if you
like, I'll read it for you."

Nick silently gave her the envelope. Janette deftly ripped it open,
scanned the single sheet it contained then replaced the letter in the
envelope and handed it back to Nick, her expression carefully neutral.
Impulsively, with a quick flick of the wrist, he tossed it into the
flames and shut his eyes so as not to see it burn.  Then he drained the
goblet with another rapid movement and announced, "I'm going out for a
walk."

"I'll come with you," Janette said quickly. She was both stunned and
afraid now.

"No!" He whirled and snarled, fangs glinting.

She jumped back. Seconds later Janette heard the door slam.

"It's not what you think," she called after him, hoping he heard.

He did hear her but kept walking regardless, lost in his memories of
Natalie and life as a Homicide detective. Wondered how long it would be
until he wearied of everlasting life. It would be easy just to keep
walking until sunrise and then...

I don't know if I can do that yet, he thought, kicking at some pebbles
on the sidewalk.

Natalie Lambert and Nick Knight were gone. Nicholas de Brabant remained.
But maybe old "Uncle Nick" could give Ellen Price a call before
Alzheimer's disease set in. Or maybe he could just fly to Ottawa one
night for a few sips of Ellen's blood. Access Ellen's memories of her
mother. Find his namesake and Nat's widower to do the same.

And he'd ask Janette what the letter said.

Nick smiled sadly. It wasn't what he truly wanted but it would have to
do. Whatever Nat said in her letter, he'd handle it. Whatever dreams
he'd have afterwards, he'd handle them. To stop caring for Natalie or
any other woman he had cherished in his long life just wasn't an option.
It never would be.

He turned homeward to Janette and Lacroix. His family would be worried
about him.

-30-

That's it! Let me know what you think by e-mailing cfarrell@sympatico.ca

Thanks!
Lee