Jack’s letters, no matter how clear and precise, were being ignored. His wife had gone irrational, insensitive and completely mad with her ideas of freedom and he was forced to explore the rationale of his decision to go to sea.

Stephen was his rock, his dear friend and great champion but the good doctor was unfortunately unable to see the entire scale of this battle. Stephen was convinced that circling Natalie and watching from afar will give her time and space to see reason, but it wasn’t a comforting tactic. She was no longer in Jack’s sites, he had no cannon to reach her at this distance and words scribbled on paper in fear, hope or anger were nothing more than weak blasts, completely ineffective.

So far away, another man might think to move too close to her and Jack’s children. That man might think it safe to take what can not and will never be his and Jack … well Jack clearly realized that he would be forced to “take him out”, as brother Terry might say. Foolishness. It was shear foolishness to have left.

“Jack, she tossed you from her. Threw you out. Where else were you to go?” Stephen asked as he sopped thick gravy from his plate with a crust of warm bread.

Jack had no answer.

“As your physician, I’m also concerned about where your appetite has gone. Do try to eat, Jack. You are growing thinner every day, I fear you will fall ill.”

The captain left him to dine alone. Like most things on this ill planned and ill chosen voyage, Jack had lost interest in Stephen opinions.

The quarterdeck was his and his alone, a place of solitude and no member of this crew dared approach him there, officer or sailor. He felt himself radiating heat and poison, anger and … failure. “She is my wife,” he whispered to the salt air and billowing masts. “No document, even signed by my own hand, can dissolve such a holy and eternal bond.”

In the distance a school of dolphins created their own waves in an otherwise calm Atlantic Ocean. The ship had come full circle and without his conscience efforts, Jack was heading home to the life that belonged to him. The wife, daughter and adopted son that are his by every right he could imagine.

“Did you dream it again last night?”

Jack turned a vicious scowl. How dare Stephen interrupt his thoughts on the quarterdeck. “Leave me!” he hissed.

“I will not. We must speak of this thing, for I too have experienced something … of the Portals.”

“When?”

“As I woke this morning.”

“That could be but the remainders of a dream.”

“It was not. Diana, lay at my side. We … we … fully consummated.”

“A wet dream my friend. We have both been too long at sea.” Jack sat with a thud on the bench. “Just a lovely dream from your past.”

“Then do explain this, Jack.” Steven opened his hand and lying in his palm, a lively mother of pearl button, one as the woman of their time would cherish.”

Jack fingered the delicate item and shrugged. “Perhaps someone had lost it.”

“In my bed? Jack there’s more. When she dissolved from my grasp, it was in a slow spin. A voice, most distracting and clear, announced that ‘retribution and balance will be maintained’.”

Jack’s brow knotted. “Do you suspect something is at play at the Inn?”

“You do.”

“I do, but what I seek there is not based on dreams of my past, no matter how frighteningly pure and brilliant they may be. I seek reunion with my wife.” He stood at the rail and locked hands behind his back. “We have a valid concern, my friend. Our brothers gather in Vermont this very week to watch over things, care for poor John and protect against whatever mayhem the Portals might have in store. Do you not agree that we should be there as well?” He shot a glare over his shoulder.

“I agree we should be there for the reasons our brothers are there. But you must respect the distance Natalie has requested.”

Frustration gathered in Jack’s chest and he simply spouted words his adopted son was wont to say. “Whose side are you on?”

“Yours, my friend. Yours.”

***

Stephen had seen much of Jack’s vacillating emotions and moods over the many years of their friendship, but never had he known the man to face a sad fact when it presented itself. Lucky Jack was not accustomed to losing. He had lost Natalie and through no true failing of his own. They had simply and thoroughly grown apart. Letters from them both over the past years had told the ugly tale, and it had been Stephen’s plan to show them to Jack during the long voyage. To wait until he was calm and ready and present the evidence that the world and woman Jack loved most were changed and gone. That time never came.

Instead Jack was tenaciously insistent, denying the legal divorce granted by the State of Maine to Natalie and acting as though she was still his to have and hold and scold and love.

This new, dangerous twist of Portal interference could only prove disastrous and as afraid as he was of what the Portals had in mind, what Jack might do when close to Natalie terrified Stephen even more. Gone were the days of pistols at dawn. Jack had become unreasonable where Nat and their children were concerned. Did she know or understand the turmoil he had endured? The death of beautiful little Catherine weigh so heavy on Jack that often Stephen worried for the man’s health. Jack did not sleep well or eat well. He did not rest or smile. He was not the man he used to be. Perhaps if Natalie was aware of these issues she would soften her resolve and be less cruel to him. A simple response to just one of his letters would have brought out the sun for the poor man. 

They would return to Vermont to attend to the problems the Portals may present, but they would also need to deal with the problems divorce had created for Jack’s soul. Steven decided to take a new approach. Perhaps he could help his dear friend much better by working at it through Natalie. Perhaps he could … if nothing else … smooth the road to helping Jack understand that his life must begin anew without her.

***

The dream was intense, terrifying, so real that Jack struggled to breathe and fought for air. He was under water, sunk, a massive cannon hole gushing water and sucking him deeper and deeper into the ocean. Then he spun, spun wild and fast like a drain had chosen to take him.

“No! You may not!” he bellowed so loud he finally woke himself. A tap at the door confirmed that it was in fact a rather thunderous shout.

“Jack? Are you all right?” Stephen rushed in, pressing fingers at Jack’s wrist and looking as concerned as he ever had. “Another dream?”

“This is harsh, Stephen. I fear the worst but somehow sense this is … as you had dreamed … truly meant to be a rebalancing of us, a restructuring of us all.”

Jack’s face was covered with sweat, as was his hair and tee shirt. His eyes wildly darted around the cabin and under Stephen’s fingertips, his pulse raced. “My friend, I’m going to give you something to help you sleep. This has gone far enough. You are no longer a young man, Jack, your heart can’t take much more of this abuse.”

“Abuse?”

Steven sat back on a chair and shook his head. “Yes, abuse. You do not eat or sleep, you pace that damn quarterdeck all hours of the day and night and I have yet to see you even try to relax. You’re a fiddle string at the point of snapping! Can’t you see?”

Suddenly Jack felt a rush of reality slap him like cold water. “I will be no good to my wife and children if I don’t care for myself … but I am no good on this ship either. I must arrange to return to Vermont. Now.”

“Not now, my friend.” Stephen stabbed Jack’s arm, pressing the plunger of an injection meant to put the man out for quite a while. “Not now. When you wake, we’ll do everything we need, for now, sleep.”

Already Jack’s eyelids drooped and breath steadied. “You’ve done me in, Stephen.”

“I have.”

Again the dream thrust itself into Jack’s mind but this time he didn’t fight against it, he didn’t even worry over it. He observed. Brothers came and went through spinning vortexes, some fast, some slower and all the while John Biebe stood aside and watched. At one point he waved to Jack who returned the casual salute, even though he wished it could be more. Jack had buried his beloved Sophie, he knew the pain and emptiness of such a thing, and he also knew that he’d done little to help John. He owed the man much. After all, it was John caring for Natalie, Chelsea and young Eddie in his absence. It was John watching over and protecting them.

Jack slowly turned away from the spinning spectacle of men and Portals and walked toward a door. It was time to go home. Time to claim all that is his and more than that, time to stand with his brothers.

The waking was slow and laborious, his limbs sluggish and stomach growling for food.

“Stephen,” he bellowed and when the good doctor stepped into view, Jack growled. “How long have I been asleep?”

“Three days.”

“Feed me then get me off this damn ship.”