Chapter 14

Jarrod was almost falling out the saddle by the time he got home, so tired and so wrenched out from everything that had happened in the last 24 hours. He dismounted, giving his good horse a pat on the neck, telling the stable man to give him extra care and food. Then he dragged himself into the house.

Only Victoria and Nick were there – Nick, down in the living room now. Jarrod was a bit surprised to see him but then he remembered the doctor had told him he might be able to come downstairs soon. Nick was on the settee, pillows supporting his back as he rested his legs, knees bent slightly, on the coffee table. "Well! You're home!" he said but did not get up.

Victoria, sitting in one of the armchairs, turned and got up to greet Jarrod. She came to him as he left his hat, gloves and gunbelt in the hall and came back to the foyer. She kissed him on the cheek – and knew immediately that something was wrong. "Tired?" she asked.

"Very," Jarrod said. "We rode all night. I could use some coffee."

"I'll have Silas bring you some," Victoria said and headed to the kitchen.

Jarrod came into the living room and fell down into his thinking chair, aware he would probably catch it from his mother for not changing his clothes before he did but he was so tired he couldn't face the steps yet. Nick eyed him. "Did you catch them?"

Jarrod nodded. "We did. The kid who shot Mac is in Fred's jail." He closed his eyes.

Nick said, "You ought to look happier. Too tired?"

Jarrod nodded.

"You did good work. You ought to be proud about that. I know Mac will appreciate it."

Jarrod nodded again, then leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, his hands over his eyes.

Nick knew something more was going on. Jarrod looked almost depressed, heartbroken. That wasn't right. "What's going on, Pappy? What happened?"

Jarrod sighed and sat up. "I came back to earth, Nick. As I was catching that kid, all the fog lifted. All the sense of not belonging where I was just vanished and I felt more like myself than I've felt in weeks. So why do I feel so sorry about it?"

"Sorry? I think you'd be pretty happy."

"I'd have thought so, too, but the calm left, too. The feeling that I could hear and see better if I just let things be, let it happen – that's all gone too. And I feel – lost. Found and lost all at the same time."

"It's change," Victoria said. She was returning from the kitchen and heard what he said. She sat down in the chair beside his and reached for his hand. "You were adjusting to the way you felt before, and it all shifted on you again."

Jarrod nodded, sighed. "It seems all wrong. I should be happy to feel like I belong here again, and I am, but…" He couldn't find the words.

"But there's also a loss," Victoria said.

Jarrod nodded again. "And I'm mourning the loss even though it seems foolish to do it. There was a peace, a calm, and even that sense of not belonging was getting to be comfortable. Then, it started slipping away, and then suddenly, just like it happened when I was sick and stopped breathing, all the fog was sucked out and all the normalcy was sucked back into me."

"Perhaps because you were in pursuit of those rustlers," Victoria said. "Perhaps because you needed it to come back into you. Dr. Merar said something to Mac about the brain taking care of you in an emergency, about giving you something you need to cope."

Nick said, "Maybe that's what happened. Maybe your foggy brain thought you needed to be thinking more clearly, so it gave you a jolt of whatever it gives you to do that."

Jarrod nodded. "Maybe."

Victoria squeezed his hand. "Give it time. You'll adjust to the old you, too."

Jarrod sighed, a weary sigh. "That's a crazy thought, isn't it? To have to adjust to being yourself again."

"You were pretty sick, Jarrod," Nick said. "Something happened to you that was way out of the ordinary."

"I died," Jarrod said. "I died, and I came back but not all the way. And now I'm back all the way."

Silas came in with a tray of coffee and three cups. "Welcome home, Mr. Jarrod," he said as he put the tray down on the coffee table.

"Thank you, Silas," Jarrod said, smiling at the irony.

Silas left as Jarrod poured some coffee for himself, his mother and his brother. After handing them their cups and sipping a bit from his own, Jarrod leaned back into his chair.

"It'll take a while, but you'll feel better," Victoria said.

"Hmm," Jarrod said, and for a moment he sounded like the Jarrod who didn't belong here again, but he drank some more coffee and said, "I'm still going to have to cope with something. When the kid who shot McCall comes to trial, I'm going to have to explain myself, because that kid's gonna deny it was him who shot McCall. And I'm going to have to explain how I knew what I saw when I was brain injured at the time."

"You'll feel more stable by then," Nick said.

"And you have some time to put it all together," Victoria said.

"Hmm," Jarrod said again, and for a moment he did disappear back into that place inside him that said he didn't belong here, that said he belonged soaring in the sky and looking down and seeing everything, but it didn't last. It was a memory now, not something he could feel as he had felt it before. Before it had been a feeling that was real. A feeling he would go to sleep with at night and wake up with in the morning. A feeling he already missed, inexplicably.

He finished his coffee and got up, brushing off the chair. "I'm sorry, Mother, I was so tired I just had to sit down."

"The chair will recover," Victoria said. "So will you."

Jarrod gave her a smile and a kiss. "I'm gonna go out and tell Mac we got the man who shot him, and then I'm gonna go upstairs and take a long bath, and have a shave, and take a long nap. Nick, don't drink all my scotch."

Nick chuckled as Jarrod went off toward the front door. "How can I drink it all? You hid it!"

"Where you'll never find it!" Jarrod called as he went out the door.

Victoria smiled at Nick. "I know he's not entirely sure he's happy to be back with us, but I am."

"Were you worried?"

"A little. I knew he'd adjust to whatever he had to adjust to, but I missed him. I'm glad he's back."

Outside, Jarrod stopped for a moment and looked all around him at all the places and things he knew. Then he looked up at the sky, remembering how he'd told Nick how good it would feel to fly up into the stars, but now it didn't feel that way. Sucked back down to earth, he thought, and again felt foolish for mourning the loss of that sensation of not belonging, the sensation that now was gone. But mourn it he did. It had been a strange sensation and it was disconcerting, but it was wonderful, too. And no one would ever understand that but him.

He gave a sigh and let it drift up to the heavens. It would take time, but he knew he'd adjust to his old regular self. Now, he just bid good-bye to the Jarrod Barkley he'd been living with over the past few weeks and let that man stay a memory. There was life to live and work to do down here. Jarrod Barkley, Esquire was back where he belonged.

The End