Years passed. She wrote to Courchene, and he wrote her a nice letter back. “I think of you often, but my people need me here.”

I received a much longer letter from him, one that I never told Emily about because I didn’t know what to say. Courchene’s old romantic rival, Thomas McMahon, had died on the Western Front, targeted by the Germans to stop transmission of the Cree code. After a period of mourning, McMahon’s widow, Estelle, had come looking for Courchene, who was her childhood sweetheart. He found that he still felt about her the way he always had. They married. Courchene had never told Emily the early part of this story, and he saw no point in telling her the later part either. It would only hurt her feelings, which he didn’t want to do. Besides, there really was work, scads of it, including helping his father on the traplines, and his aunt and Estelle with their secret midwifery and herbalist work. He felt really bad about it. He still cared for Emily, but the world of the war was like a dream, and his real life was in Manitoba. He wanted me to understand, and to protect Emily, as I always had.

Tak-Wing kept coming. He told us that Old Cheung had been tortured and killed by the Kempeitai, along with Tak-Tam who had survived in their prison much longer than we had originally thought. He found this out from one of the young cricketers who had been released from the same terrible basement where Cheung and Tak-Tam were held, and heard their story. “All those military police your father killed, what an extraordinary feat!” the young cricketer said. “He was an inspiration to all of us who were imprisoned at the Supreme Court in those grim years. But the Kempeitai who lived to continue their grisly work in that prison had their vengeance on him. I’ll spare you the details.”

Tak-Wing told Emily that if she wouldn’t take him back, he no longer wanted to live.

“Are you asking me to rescue you?” she asked.

“Of course not.”

“What Cheung did to those murderers, you tried to do to me and Raymond.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I wasn’t myself. Will you forgive me?”

“I don’t think I can.”

“Will you take me back without forgiveness?”

“Are you asking me to carry your grief for you?”

“I would never do that.”

“It sounds like you are. But I won’t. And I can’t forgive you either. Why don’t you just go die?”

But he didn’t die. He kept visiting. We gave him tea and sometimes even dinner, but Emily didn’t want him to stay and so we always made him leave.