Chapter 10

Dinner at the Barkley house was very quiet. Jarrod ate, but wasn't feeling all that well, and he had virtually nothing to say. Heath and Audra tried some quiet chit-chat, but it was just between the two of them. It was so quiet they could all hear the clock in the hall ticking away. Ticking the minutes and then the hours away and Nick still wasn't home.

"I think you'd better go after him," Victoria said quietly to Heath as they all left the table.

Jarrod heard her and was half tempted to suggest he do it himself, but he knew he had no business being on a horse tonight. He sat down in his thinking chair in the living room, declined a brandy and just asked for Silas to bring some coffee.

Heath gave a nod to Victoria, grabbed his gun and hat and went out the door. It was dark outside, but the stable yard was still lit from the lanterns inside the stable and the lights from the house. Heath was about to saddle his horse when he heard a horse coming into the yard outside. In a moment, Nick was leading Coco inside.

"I was just about to come after you," Heath said. "You been drinking?"

"No," Nick said. "Just took it slow coming home."

"Did you talk to her?"

Nick began to unsaddle his horse. "Yeah, I talked to her."

"Wanna talk about it?"

Nick paused before he lifted the saddle off Coco's back. "Did Mother tell you what I overheard before I left?"

"Yeah," Heath said.

"Well, it was true," Nick said. "Everything Jarrod said was true. Everything he knew six years ago that he didn't tell me about was true."

Heath felt almost heartbroken for the man. He thought back to the first time he was really, honestly in love. She was out of the picture now, gone somewhere he didn't know. He imagined how he would feel to find out she had been a prostitute or something like that. "I'm sorry, Nick," was all Heath could think to say.

"I rode to town madder than hell at him, for not telling me then and for not telling me now," Nick said. "I was ready to bust him in the other eye and blind him for a week. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized he was right about something else he said. I was feeling my way through growing up back then. Father had just died. I was in charge of this place all on my own, and I was trying to figure it out. And I was making mistakes. Carol was a mistake. And maybe Jarrod made a mistake back then in not telling me what was going on – maybe he made a bigger one today when he still didn't tell me she was a prostitute and I had to overhear it when he told Mother – but Carol said something. She said Jarrod told her if she didn't take his money and leave six years ago, he would fight with everything in him to keep her from marrying me."

Nick grew silent. Heath said, "He had your back."

"He had my back," Nick said. "And he was doing what he thought he had to do to help me figure out who this 22-year-old kid was and how he was going to run an empire. I thought about that and thought about it and came home slow because I wanted to come to terms with it before I saw him and hit him and put that other eye out. I don't want to fight with him anymore. How does his eye look?"

"Terrible," Heath said. "Swollen shut real good. He won't be looking out of that eye for a couple days."

Nick sighed and lifted the saddle away from Coco. "I hate it when I have to apologize."

Heath chuckled a little. "I think he feels more like he has to apologize to you. He didn't say a word all through dinner."

Nick took the saddle blanket off Coco's back. "Well, we gotta make it up to one another somehow, I guess."

"Why don't you let me take care of Coco and you go talk to him?" Heath suggested.

Nick gave him a pat on the arm. "Thanks," he said and headed into the house.

When Nick went inside, Victoria and Audra, both on the settee, looked up, but Jarrod in his thinking chair did not. Nick could see he had a cup of coffee in his hand. He couldn't see that Jarrod had both eyes closed. Nick took his hat and gunbelt off and left them in the foyer, then went to the refreshment table and poured himself a whiskey. That was when he turned around and saw the state of his older brother's left eye – swollen shut, black and blue straight down into his cheekbone. Jarrod had his good eye shut, too. It was probably too much effort to keep one eye open.

"I'm sorry about the eye, big brother," Nick said.

Jarrod opened that one good eye. "I'm sorry about the rest of it. I should have told you."

Nick nodded. "Yeah, you should have, but I understand why you didn't tell me back then, and I can forgive you for not telling me today. I understand you were trying to look out for me."

"Even if I did it in a clumsy way?"

"Maybe especially because you did it in a clumsy way. It's good to know that big brother makes mistakes, too. But it's better to know he's looking out for me."

"Are we all right now?" Jarrod asked.

"Yeah," Nick said. "I talked to Carol. You and me, we're all right."

That was all they said about it.

"Where's Heath?" Audra asked when no one spoke.

"Out taking care of Coco for me," Nick said. "He's a pretty good kid, that Heath. He listens a lot better than I do."

Victoria smiled. "He is a patient man." She liked that about him. Maybe some of it would rub off on Nick.

Audra thought of something. "What are we going to do with all those papers of President Grant's he found?"

"I forgot all about those," Jarrod said.

"I think," Nick said, "that once Jarrod can see out of both eyes again, we all gather around the fireplace and burn them, one by one, until they're all gone. Put this whole sad affair to the torch."

"Not a bad idea," Audra said.

Jarrod knew he still had to do something for his client, Carol Keenan Bernard, but he didn't mention that for now. That could wait until tomorrow. This day had been hellacious enough, and Nick's idea to burn the papers had been a good one. Very symbolic.

"Coffee, Nick?" Victoria asked, pouring a cup and handing it out to him.

Nick looked at the bit of whiskey in his glass. He took the cup of coffee from his mother, poured the remainder of his whiskey into the cup with it, and set the whiskey glass aside. He sat down in the empty chair next to Jarrod's with a sigh.

Epilogue

It only took a couple days for Markle, the federal prosecutor in Sacramento, to receive the sheriff's report on Carol Keenan Bernard and review it. Jarrod got word from Pinkerton that they hadn't found anywhere that she was wanted for anything. Her marriage to the man named Jerome Bernard was legitimate and he had died falling off a ladder a year earlier. So, it was all in the federals' lap now. Jarrod exchanged a few telegrams with Markle, and it wasn't long before Markle said the case would not be prosecuted. Carol had given the little bit of information she had about the man who gave her the bad money to Jarrod, who passed it on. The federals decided it just wasn't worth it to prosecute Carol.

Carol had to give up her horse, though, in payment for her time in the Stockton jail. When she was released, Jarrod was there – his eye still discolored but not swollen shut anymore – to escort her to the train station and make sure she left town. It almost seemed like déjà vu. He had escorted her out of town six years ago, too, via the train.

He tried not to sound bitter about it this time, but as he put her on the train, he said, "This time, Carol, make sure you don't come back to Stockton."

She nodded. "Thanks for getting me off."

"I do hope the best for you. If you can find another man like your husband, you'll be better off for it."

She smiled a little. "Six years ago, I didn't recognize a good man when I found him. When I met and married my husband, I did understand what was really good and decent. I got lost after I lost him. But maybe I can get found again now. Please tell Nick – well, you know."

Jarrod nodded as the train began to pull away. "I know," he said.

He watched Carol climb the stairs and go into the car there, and he watched until the train went around the bend and was gone. He gave a sigh. Maybe this time it would really all be over.

He left the platform to go back to his office – but there was Nick, in the street, watching. He had seen Jarrod put Carol on the train. Jarrod wasn't really surprised to see Nick standing there. It surprised him a little that Nick hadn't asked for some last time with her, but then he thought he shouldn't have been surprised. There really wasn't much of anything more to say.

"Been standing there long?" Jarrod asked him.

"Long enough," Nick said. "Did she pay you?"

Jarrod chuckled. "With good money. Let me buy you lunch – on Carol."

Nick nodded, and they headed for the Stockton House together.

The End