So this chapter feels like a bit of a mess. I wrote the previous chapter mainly with the relationship between Evan and Harvey in mind, and Kent seemed to be the most credible 'cause' for that problem, but then I have to follow through and solve it, of course. I also do want there to be some kind of closure for the 'troubled' characters in the game - Kent, Shane, Pam and Elliott - and while Shane starts seeing a psychologist by the time you reach 8 hearts (but only goes from one addiction to another after you marry him) and Elliott finishes his book (but never ends up making enough money to upgrade that shack of his), the non-bachelor characters just kind of go on wallowing in their problems forever. I don't think I can fix Pam, because even though the character admits that she's aware this isn't the best life for Penny, she never reaches the conclusion that the alcohol is the problem (you give her a bloody house and when that doesn't magically solve all the problems she has, she decides to become religious instead, but never actually changes anything about the way she lives her life - Pam seems to have been written as a basket case).

When it comes to Kent, you can play a hundred years in the game and he never stops saying that he feels like he doesn't fit in the village, that his life there lacks meaning ("I don't know what to do with myself now that I'm back. I'm used to having more structure in my day." - Dude could really use a job). He can't connect with his kids and laments that he wasn't there to see Sam grow up. When you reach high enough hearts he starts admitting he has trouble sleeping - another thing he never stops saying after he starts - and of course there's the scene of him freaking out at the sound of popcorn being popped. In the meantime Jodi starts telling you she got married too soon and longs for the freedom of not having a family, and I can just imagine how that feeling is both exacerbated by Kent being emotionally unavailable, and also makes him feel worse. I would really just like there to be rest for this character. Wounds are supposed to heal with time, and if Shane can get a therapist, then so can Kent. Also, it might be nice to see one character that actually gets better with time?

The problem is I don't think I know enough about PTSD/ depression/ that kind of thing to really get Kent's reactions adequately. I think my 'solution' shouldn't be too improbable, it's basically the same kind of idea you get in a help group. But if anyone has a better idea of how to handle the conversation in this chapter, I can definitely use some ideas.

13 winter, year 2

The Broken Soldier

Harvey keeps me in observation for two days because I have no one at home to keep an eye on me. During that time, nothing is mentioned again about sexual orientations, relationships or anything like that – I don't really dare bring it up as long as he doesn't, and I can't trust my brain anyway for the moment. Can figure that out later.

What does get mentioned every now and then is what is going to be done about Kent. On Thursday, when Maru is in the hospital to keep me company, Harvey leaves to talk to "a few people" and comes back with the information that Kent tends to go to the pub on Fridays and Saturdays and that Gus has noticed him getting belligerent after he's had a few. As Sam also tends to go to the pub on Fridays to hang out with his friends, Saturday is probably the best time to approach Kent.

So at about six pm I crackle through the snow, wipe some snow off the bench in front of the pub and sit down as Harvey has asked. Only a few minutes later, Leah comes over and sits next to me.

"Hi," she says.

"Hi. How's things?"

"Okay. Your head more or less recovered?"

"Yeah, seems to be fine now."

"Everything okay on the farm, too?"

"Yeah, Marnie looked after the animals while I was gone so they've probably been better than when I'm there."

"Good."

An awkward silence falls. I'm really too nervous to think of anything to talk about. It's like an exam but a thousand times worse, there's only one thing I can think about.

"Harvey asked me to help with… um. You know." Leah says then.

"Oh. I didn't know." Does she know I'm gay? Or only that Kent hit me? Does she know about the thing with Jodi?

"He said you didn't think you could do it."

I look at the ground in front of me.

"I'm trying not to have second thoughts."

"You don't have to, you know. I saw the state you were in, I can testify."

"Um, thanks."

"Hey."

I raise my eyes to hers.

"You can stick with me, okay? Don't worry about it. My right hook is nothing to mess with."

That's enough to make me chuckle, at least. I've heard banging from inside her cottage often enough while fishing.

"For some reason I don't doubt that."

"Harvey is inside already, isn't he?"

"Yeah, he said to go in at half past."

We wait ten more minutes. By this time my ass is freezing off and I'm almost glad to be able to go inside.

I spot Harvey at the table to the right, just inside the door, talking to Clint. Leah pulls me along to her regular table – which is right next to Kent's.

"No, Leah, please." I do my best not to look at him but it's uncomfortable to have him there and out of sight. I honestly don't rationally think he'll attack me out of nowhere, but this is not a rational impulse. It itches in my back.

"Okay, here then."

She sits down on a bar stool right at the corner of the bar. It's further away from Kent than the table she was going for, at least. I sit down next to her.

"What do you want?" Leah asks.

"Nothing."

Gus comes over.

"Good evening. What can I bring you?"

"For me a pale ale," Leah answers, "and what's the dish of the day?"

"Crab cakes."

"Just a salad, then, please." She looks at me, maybe in case I've changed my mind.

"Nothing right now, Gus, thanks."

Gus nods.

"It's gonna be okay. You'll see." He says, then turns to the kitchen.

"The whole village knows, do they," I whisper at Leah. I'm starting to feel just a bit miserable.

"Only people who were going to be here, I think. Clint is here almost every evening." She nods at that table right next to the entrance.

I jump when I hear the bar stool next to me being pulled backward.

"I'm sorry, it's me," Harvey says quickly. I take a deep breath to calm my heart while he sits down. "Might I ask how you're doing?"

"Would like to be buried alive just about now."

He puts a hand on my shoulder briefly.

"Nothing is going to happen to you. We're going to make sure of that. Remember, I'll only call you in if he denies what happened."

"He's not interested in liquid courage," Leah says lightly.

"Alcohol, on my brain, right now. Sounds like a stellar idea," I answer with a forced grin.

"That's a valid point," Harvey says to Leah. "I'm just going to get this over with so you can go home and relax." He pats my shoulder again and gets up to calmly move over to Kent's table. Leah and I are close enough, I realize now, that we can hear everything.

"Good evening," Harvey says.

"Hey, doc. What's up?"

"Kent, there's something I need to talk to you about."

Kent scoffs.

"The faggot told you some stories, did he."

I resist the urge to shrink in on myself. I can pretend I can't hear him, he's not talking to me. Leah's salad arrives and as she reaches for her cutlery, she puts a hand on my arm for a moment. People use 'faggot' for an insult all the time with people they consider unworthy of respect. She doesn't need to believe he's talking about a truth he happens to know.

"Honestly, I had to do some prying to get them out, but people don't get heavy concussions and subcutaneous hemorrhages in the shape of a fist on their abdomen all out of nowhere. Seems he didn't have the brainpower to tell me he walked into a door at the time."

I am frankly amazed at Harvey's sharp tongue. Using the correct medical terminology for something as simple as a bruise purely to intimidate is a flex I would never have come up with. Following that up immediately with an allusion to domestic abuse effectively casts Kent as an abuser.

"Did he also tell you he had his hands all over my wife at the time?"

"Now, is he a faggot or not?"

"I don't care. As long as he stays away from my family, there's no problem."

"So if Jodi finds someone else to air her heart out to, that's fine? As long as it isn't Evan?"

"Is that any of your business?"

"It is if I'm going to be dealing with concussions every time she has a heartfelt conversation with someone. Kent, she knows you're in pain. She knows a part of what hurts you is that you know you're different from before you left and you know that that is hard on her too. And she tries to put on a brave face while you're around because she doesn't want to hurt you even more by letting you see her cry over this, but she's a human being. If you don't want to talk about this, I can't force you to, but she needs to talk to someone."

"She should talk to me. That's what she married me for."

"Are you the man she married, Kent? How do you react when she tells you she misses that man? Because from what I hear, she feels like she cannot talk to you about that without you either getting angry or walking out."

"Sounds like she's been telling everyone but me, instead," Kent growls. "How about I'm not the one who needs a shrink? That's what you're trying to get to, isn't it?"

"Jodi is not the source of the conflict. She's doing what she can to help you. Meanwhile, you get belligerent and self-destructive every time you've had a few beers, and you're hitting people just because they happened to walk in while Jodi was crying. Kent, I do not understand. Is it that pleasant to live inside your head right now?"

"It's my problem!"

"If you get stabbed in the neck that's your problem too. Are you going to sit at home trying to patch that up with band-aids? No, you're going to go to a doctor, because that's the person whose job it is to make sure you don't die when you're wounded. You took a massive hit to your mind, Kent. The shrink is there to stop the bleeding and help you heal so you don't kill yourself. And just like with a stab to the neck, this is not something you can fix on your own. If you go on struggling like this, you're either going to end up losing your family or forcing them to scrape brain matter off the wall.

"That what your little numbers say, huh? Your statistics and shit? Fuck this."

Kent slams back the rest of his beer and gets up, obviously wanting to leave. I figure Harvey won't try to stop him.

I'm not really thinking as I move to stand between him and the door. I just… have to. Then he's in front of me, and my throat is closing up, and I need to do something. This needs to be solved.

"They're not…" I try to say, but my voice is refusing service. I cough – that seemed to work the last time. "They're not numbers. They're hundreds of people who spent years suffering until they couldn't take it anymore. There's a… a John in there who lost his legs but they still hurt like fucking crazy at night and no painkiller helps. There's a Jerry who did find a drug that helped, but now he can't live without that drug anymore. There's a… Fuck, I don't know, a Harry whose children are afraid of him because he can't get rid of this impulse of shouting orders at them. There's a Ted who drinks himself to sleep every night because of the nightmares. There's also a Lenny who found out his wife was messing around with some other guy while he was gone and who then lost the custody over his kids because he hit that wife when he found out she'd been cheating. Nobody is saying that it's unreasonable to feel like the business end of a gun might be better than this. I have no clue what's going through your mind on a random Tuesday morning, but it's probably not lambs and apple blossoms like it is in my case. Jodi asked me to talk to you, to try and be your friend, because you need someone to talk to who can actually understand. And I'd love to, I just can't. I wouldn't have minded being a friend to you, but I can't be that friend. I don't think anyone here can. But I think it would… it might be a relief to you to find one."

Kent is staring at me, and I'm not sure if I'm imagining that shimmer in his eyes, but then he looks away. I vaguely notice that Gus is coming out from behind the bar.

"They're numbers to a shrink. Those guys don't understand."

"I don't know, man. But there are people out there who do. I think the shrink is there to help you learn how to go back to normal life, but I think that's just as important for being able to live and be happy with your family again. If they're not the same person, then they can be two different ones."

"As a matter of fact, I think I might know one," Gus speaks up, moving up next to Kent. "I've got a cousin who came back from the front two years ago. Got shot up, declared unfit to fight. He had a lot of trouble at first, I haven't heard from him in a while. He lives in Arcas City. I can give him a ring, see if he can come over sometime."

"I'm not gonna have someone come all the way out here just to listen to me sob."

"Considering he'll have gone through some of the same shit, you might end up sobbing together and feeling better after," Gus says. "Sounds to me like you could use a break. Get it off your chest. Give Jodi a break, too. She can't deal with this."

"She's been talking to the guy you go to when you don't know where else to go," I add. "The doctor. Maybe you could try the same. Talk to someone else about it, take some of that weight off her shoulders. And off your own, at the same time. It sure seems to be a heavy load."

Kent heaves a deep sigh and then focuses very specifically on me.

"Let me out."

"I'm not stopping you," I say, but no sound comes out of my mouth. He walks past me and out into the cold.

I kind of stand in my spot trying to shake the feeling that I'm about to be hit again. A second later a hug from Leah slams into my chest – she really is strong.

"That was really brave, Evan," she says. I try to kind of shrug myself out of her arms.

"That's okay… thanks… I don't need the whole… end-of-movie 'you're such a hero' spiel, I'm just trying to help."

"It seems to me what you did was more effective than what I did," Harvey tells me. "I do believe that warrants praise. How do you know so much about the struggles of war veterans?"

"He who reads lives a thousand lives."

"I wanna bet you could use a beer now," Gus says jovially, and grabs a glass from one of his shelves.

"It's still not a good idea for my brain."

"One won't hurt. If you really want it," Harvey opines.

"What I really want is a hot cocoa."

"I don't have that, sorry," Gus shrugs.

"I do," Leah says triumphantly. "Come on over to my place? Harvey, you want one?"

"I'm not much of a fan of chocolate," Harvey admits. "I'll just be going home."

"I can make tea too. Or bring a beer from here."

"Thank you for your hospitality, Leah, but I really believe I'll be going home. Gus, will you give that cousin of yours a call? I don't think Kent can object if he's just visiting you for a few days to soak up the clean air of the valley."

"Was gonna do that anyway, don't you worry. I'll let you know when he'll be here."