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“What kind of question is that?” countered Jack. “How can they have been anything but bad choices? Paddy trusted me, and he died.”

“Paddy?” John said. “You mean Nemo, don’t you?”

“Well, yes,” said Jack. “I meant to say Nemo.”

“Warnie mentioned that you’d had a friend die in the war,” put in Charles, “but he told us you were nowhere near the battle and had nothing to do with it.”

“That doesn’t matter,” Jack said. “I promised Paddy’s mother that I’d look after him, and I let him get killed, just as I did Nemo.”

“It isn’t the same,” argued John.

“Sure it is,” said Jack. “They both died because of choices I made. If I had done things differently before that conflict at the Western Front…gone a day earlier, or a day later…anything. If I had done anything differently, Paddy would still be alive. And I’ve had to see his mother’s face every day since the war—loving me for trying, loving me for taking his place in caring for her, but always, always knowing that I failed, and let him die.”

“Everyone makes choices,” said Jamie, “and we have to live with those choices. Did Aven ever tell you what went on between us?”

“No,” said Charles. “But we inferred a great deal from the number of opportunities she took to curse you.”

“Heh.” Jamie chuckled sadly. “I can’t say I blame her. At one time, not really all that long ago, we were very much in love, she and I.”

“Ah, not to give offense,” said John, “but aren’t you considerably older than Aven?”

Jamie squinted at him. “There are more mysteries in the Archipelago than you yet know, young John,” he responded. “Aven is not as young as she appears to be—and at that time, I did not appear anywhere near as old as I was. But suffice it to say, she was the principal reason I agreed to become a Caretaker.”

“I understand that,” Jack said.

“I think you do,” said Jamie. “But she was not the reason I left.”

“The widow,” offered Charles. “The woman here in London, with the children…Aven mentioned her, and not much more favorably than she did you, I’m afraid.”

Jamie shook his head. “She never understood. There were responsibilities in the Archipelago for which I was not prepared. And there were opportunities for responsibility here that I hoped to embrace. And so I did.”

“And you’ve been happy ever since, I suppose?” asked Charles.

“Would that it were so,” said Jamie. “All I wanted to do was be a father, a mentor, a brother to those five boys. To protect them from the evils of the world. And I didn’t think I could do that from an archipelago of islands at the edges of existence. I thought I could do it if I were right here, with them. But I was wrong.”

He lowered his head and closed his eyes. “You lost your friend Paddy in the war?” he asked Jack, looking up.

“Yes.”

“And you, too, lost someone?” he said to John, who nodded. “And you?” to Charles, who also indicated a loss.

“You see?” Jamie said with a tremor in his voice. “I also lost someone in that war. One of my boys. And I lost another after the war, to a drowning that may have even been by his own hand. So what good has it done, that I chose to leave my role as Caretaker, if I could not protect those whom I loved, even from themselves?”

He banged a fist against the mantel, startling the dog. “At least you three jumped headlong into it and took the battle to one of the prime causes—the Winter King himself. Perhaps if I had done that, if I had stayed, the war might have ended sooner, and I might still have my George. So who am I to judge good choices from bad?

“But,” he finished, turning again to Jack, “I know that you should not carry the guilt that you do for Nemo’s death. Events on that day transpired exactly as they needed to.”

“How can you say that?” said Jack, incredulous.

“Because I know Nemo was very close to Jules Verne,” answered Jamie, “and Jules knew many things that he never shared with any of us. But I know one thing he passed on to Nemo, that I am happy to share with you.

“Nemo knew the exact hour and means of his death. And, knowing this, he had the ability to change events if he so chose.