Chapter 2
Victoria gave it very long thought, but she decided she needed to go to Jarrod, to let him know that he was not alone tonight, at least. She had no idea what she was going to say to him, but she needed at least to let him say some things to her.
She went into the kitchen and found Jarrod sitting with his eyes closed while he held the ice to his face. He looked up when he heard her come in. He immediately closed his eyes again.
Victoria came closer to him, taking hold of his free hand.
"No, Mother, don't do that," he said and took his hand away. "I need your punishment, not your sympathy."
She half expected he would say something like that. "I'd rather have all the evidence in before I decide if you need punishment." She took the towel with the ice away from him. "Let me look at that." She took a critical look at his face.
"It's not so bad," Jarrod said with a smile his face couldn't pull off. "Nick's hit me a lot harder than this before."
"He feels completely betrayed, Jarrod," she said, holding the towel against his face herself. "By Alderson, by you. A lot of what he thought was true was turned upside down tonight."
"And I'm responsible for all of it," Jarrod said, taking the towel from her. "Let him be angry with me for a while. The longer he's angry with me, the less he'll be angry with himself."
"With himself? What does he have to be angry with himself about?"
Jarrod looked at her. "Nick is a man of conscience, Mother. He just found out the slaughter of a whole town happened right under his nose. Forget that he couldn't have known about it so he couldn't have stopped it. Nick won't be thinking about that. He'll just be feeling angry and guilty. Let him be angry with me. Maybe some of the guilt will work itself out if he can aim his anger at me."
Victoria took Jarrod's hand again, but again, he pulled away. "And what about your conscience?" Victoria asked.
"I deserve whatever my conscience is doing to me. I'm responsible for what happened to Nick and to Heath, and to you and Audra."
"Before you convict yourself, I think you'd better get some rest so you can defend yourself better tomorrow than you have so far tonight. You're going to have a beautiful black eye to go with that swollen lip."
"Well, Nick may add a few other adornments the next time I see him. Not to mention Heath, and even Audra – and you?"
She smiled. "I'd have hit you by now if I was going to. But I do want an explanation, Jarrod. Not tonight. Tomorrow. You have a lot to explain, and you'd better spend some time composing your argument."
"I know. 'I'm sorry' isn't good enough."
"No, it definitely isn't."
Jarrod got up from the stool he was sitting on and took the wet towel to the sink. He began to wash it out.
But Victoria followed and took it from him, saying, "I'll take care of it."
Jarrod was surprised how stiff and sore he was all over, but then his body had been tensed up all night, even though no one knew it. He'd been tense when he let Nick hit him. Letting it all go now made him hurt all over. He wasn't sure he could ever explain to his family what this night had done to him, or that he even wanted to. He had held onto a deep secret, and he had watched the people he loved suffer because of it. They had endured far worse than he had. What he was suffering tonight was unimportant. He'd keep it a secret forever.
He gave his mother a kiss on the top of her head and started up the back stairs to his room.
"Jarrod – " Victoria said as he began to climb.
He stopped. "Yes?"
"Nothing like this can ever happen again."
Oh, that stung. Jarrod wished she had slapped him instead. He didn't know what to say, so he ended up just saying, "Yes," and he went upstairs to his room.
XXXXXXXXX
Jarrod left early the next morning, without seeing anyone, and spent the day in his office in town. Everyone he saw stared hard at his split lip and black eye, but he could tell that those who knew him well just chalked it up to another Barkley family argument. He didn't explain anything to anyone.
He fretted all day over how he was going to explain things to his family, but it came down to just telling the truth and letting them decide what was to come next.
He came home when they gathered for drinks before dinner. All eyes watched as Jarrod wordlessly came into the living room and poured himself a scotch. Then he turned to face them, black eye and split lip on display, and spoke.
"Agent Macklin came to me a month ago, told me what we all now know, that Alderson was responsible for the slaughter at Mayville and for conspiring to kill Abraham Lincoln, but they couldn't prove it. I didn't believe him at first, but he had enough hearsay and circumstantial evidence that I began to believe. He told me what he wanted me to do, and at first I balked, I couldn't do it, but then he showed me a letter he was carrying from the head of the Secret Service. It convinced me. Nick, Heath, we planned it for the time you would be away on the drive but when you came back early it made everything more complicated and prolonged. The agents had orders to abort the scheme if anyone was endangered. The fire happened and was over so fast, and Heath, your rescue attempt was over so fast, we just kept going until we got what we needed from Alderson.
"When I think about it now, I don't know if I would have done the same thing. You all suffered terribly and it – killed me to keep everything from you, but I had no choice. I kept hearing the screams of the people who were murdered at Mayville. I kept seeing President Lincoln – the man who saved our country and a man I loved and admired more than any man I ever met – "
Jarrod swallowed. "Well, I did what I did, and while I'm not ashamed of it, I am so very sorry you all had to suffer so much because of me. The government had been trying to get Alderson for years, and seeing him brought to justice was something I just had to do."
He stopped there. They all waited to see what Victoria was going to do. Jarrod's eyes were on her, but he drank his scotch in one swallow and stared down at the floor when she did not move. It took long moments before she got up, approached him, and kissed him on the good cheek.
Nick walked out, toward the library.
Jarrod gave it a moment of thought, but only a moment, before he said, "Let me handle this – and don't try to break it up if it starts to sound like the house is coming down." He left his glass at the refreshment table and went after Nick.
Jarrod found him in the library. Nick was into the whiskey there. Jarrod wasn't sure how to approach him. Further explaining probably wouldn't do any good. It was Nick's time to do the talking, but how to get him to start?
Jarrod closed the library doors behind him and said, "That won't drown your guilt."
Nick spun around with fire in his eyes. "MY guilt?! You think this is about ME? You put the family through a night of hell, and you think this is about ME?!"
Nick came over to him and decked him again, and Jarrod let him. Crashing against the closed doors, Jarrod slid down and landed sitting up on the floor. His lip was reopened and bleeding.
Jarrod just sat there, blotting the blood. "Yeah, your guilt. I know how you feel."
"Oh, you do, do you?"
"Yes, I do. Last night you found out an entire town and the President of the United States were murdered on your watch, and I was the one who told you. I told you, and I made you believe you would hang for it, and I was responsible for Heath getting hurt and Mother and Audra nearly being killed. Hell, if you had done all that to me and the people I love, I'd take one of those rifles off the rack and blow your brains out."
Nick looked down at him. The words were blunt, and spot on. They summed up almost exactly how Nick felt. "Why did you do it?"
"For justice – for the people of Mayville, for President Lincoln – even for you."
Nick grabbed him by the shirt front and threw him back down to the floor, against the doors. "Don't you dare turn this into justice for me!"
"All right, then, just for Mayville and Lincoln. Nick, what would you have done? If government agents had come to you and told you we know this man slaughtered a town and helped plan the murder of Abraham Lincoln – are you gonna tell me you'd have done any differently?"
"They DIDN'T come to me," Nick said. "And neither did you."
"You weren't supposed to be here. You weren't supposed to be involved."
"Forget me. What about Mother and Audra?"
"Those men had orders that they were to call a halt to it if Mother and Audra were endangered in any way."
Nick leaned down into Jarrod's face. "But they didn't, did they?"
"It was over too fast. When Heath tried to rescue you, it was over too fast. It happened the way it happened, Nick, and I'd sell my soul if I could have handled it better, but I couldn't. This was all my fault, and I accept the responsibility for it, so lift me up and hit me again if it'll help you feel better. You had no part in any of this – not back then, not last night. Alderson betrayed you, and I betrayed you. He's not here for you to slug, so slug me, all you want."
Nick glared hard, and he pulled Jarrod up by his shirt front again. But then he let up. Jarrod was able to stand, but he leaned back against the doors for support when Nick let him go.
"You're right," Nick said, more quietly. "Mayville happened on my watch."
"You couldn't have stopped it, Nick," Jarrod said, still blotting the blood from his lip. "Alderson betrayed you as much as he betrayed Mayville and the entire country. I had to bring him to justice if I could. I couldn't turn those agents down when they came to me. What would you have done?"
Nick sighed. "Probably the same thing – except I might have gone and hung Alderson."
"Nick, I am sorry about all of it. I truly am. But I couldn't refuse to help them get justice for Mayville, and for Lincoln, and for you."
Nick sighed again. "All right, Jarrod. All right. I understand – and I don't know, maybe I ought to even thank you. But you can never do anything like this again, you got me?"
Nick poked his finger at Jarrod's face for emphasis. Jarrod heard his mother's words from the night before in Nick's words. He nodded, and as he said to his mother, he just said, "Yes."
