NOW:
Peggy was right: Jamie was doing poorly in math.
This hadn't necessarily been a secret. Apparently, it was commonly known knowledge that had been shared with everyone in the Cartwright family except for Ben. It hadn't been hidden, rather overlooked, as even Ben could not deny he had been preoccupied as of late.
Jamie told the truth about his failing grade immediately when asked about it, and Ben vowed to set aside time to help his youngest son sort through figures that had begun to derail the teen. He didn't know everything where the subject of math was concerned; still, time would prove he knew enough, and he would come to look forward to the evenings reserved for only he and Jamie as they sat together and worked through the problems the boy could not solve on his own. It was nice to have that allotted time; he had been unaware of how much it was needed.
Peggy had been right about other things too— as much as it aggrieved Ben to admit or think about them. He did not know a lot about things where Peggy or Adam or even Noah were concerned. In his memory, the last six years was a vacant span where interactions with and knowledge of his eldest son was concerned. A period of lost time. The best he could hope for now—the best any of them could hope for—was a peaceful future that would unfold without any more vacant spans of time.
Despite Peggy's determination otherwise, he would remain intent on not involving himself in Adam's affairs, because the girl had been right about something else: he could help in her fight against Adam for rights over the Running D. He would not, because he did not want to. From his point of view, the potential risks of doing such a thing were not worth the result. Anything that would cause Adam to drift further away was not worth doing—or saying. If Peggy wanted to push the topic, then it was her war to wage with Adam, alone and without reinforcements. Indirectness and manipulative behavior never got anyone anywhere good. Neither did harboring secrets or concealing ugly truths. These were both lessons long learned that Ben found himself increasingly preoccupied with as he spent more and more time at the Running D.
He did not want to be there; he had no real reason to ride out to the property day after day and about a hundred different reasons not to, but something about the decrepit house and barn and the dilapidated corral kept calling him back, imploring him to look at them again and again. Each time he did, he was overcome by another ugly truth: years ago, he had blamed the wrong man for what had become of this place. He had blamed Adam for Will's sins when he should have blamed himself. He had been so angry, so frustrated and downright fearful, that he had lost touch with the reality of the situation. He had been so eager to dismiss the past that he hadn't considered the present or the future—or the people he loved the most.
Whilst betrothed to Laura, it was Adam who had kept the corral gate fixed, the hired hands in line, and the Running D operational. It was Adam who had mended all the things Frank Dayton had left behind when he died, and it Will who had broken them again. No, Ben thought, his nephew hadn't just broken things; he had demolished them, fracturing, and destroying everything he had encountered.
Of course, it was always destined to be that way.
A boy couldn't grow up the way Will did and not have such a childhood leave cavernous marks, impacting personality, behavior, and habits. Like his father before him, Will was not a man who was meant to be a father, and like their father before them, John Cartwright should not have been one either. There was a time when Ben had believed he himself would never dare have children; there was just too much at stake to do so. Their father—his and John's—had taught them many things, not a single one of them good. He had ruled their home with an iron fists and a temper he neither tried to contain or control; their mother had been too passive—or fearful—to ever interject with how her husband dealt with their children.
As a boy, his father's mutilating anger frightened Ben beyond reason, and as a young man, it was Ben's own impairing anger he would begin to fear. It would lead him to do and say things he would regret for the rest of his life. He would learn to control it, however. Captain Abel Stoddard would be the first person to give him reason to do such a thing. Stoddard's daughter, Elizabeth, would become another. Eventually Adam would become the most important one, though Ben's son would never be made aware of that. It didn't seem proper to share such things after the fact. It didn't seem appropriate to give credence to a past a man was trying desperately to forget—especially when he had built a new life for himself so far away from where the past had originally taken place.
Looking upon the remains of the Running D, Ben found he could no longer dismiss the past or forget it. No, he needed to remember, so he could understand what happened here and why. He needed to understand so he could help Adam understand and then maybe that would be enough to save Peggy. From the past that still haunted her. From the lingering pain of her parent's mistakes. From herself.
Peggy was mouthy and insolent, pain, frustration, and hatred guiding her every word. It was obvious to Ben what most others probably overlooked: she was deeply wounded, eager to control everything she could for fear of the damage the decisions of others could inflict upon her already punctured heart. She did not simply want to govern her life; she needed to. Frank and Laura Dayton, Will and Adam Cartwright, and even Ben himself, they had all made decisions that impacted her life in a negative manner; they had all had a hand in shaping her. Instead of reflecting the best of each of them, she was reflecting the worst.
"Peggy's not really like this," Adam had tiredly said. The words were an apology of sorts, extended when he finally returned home to relieve his father. Though Ben hadn't asked for one, it didn't make it any less welcome, a silent understanding between father and son: the evening had been difficult for Ben, because Peggy had made it that way. "Believe it or not, she's usually quite pleasant to be around. She's engaging and intelligent, almost too intelligent, really."
"She's a teenager," Ben had said, suddenly needing to soothe his son somehow. Had Adam always looked this tired? Or was it the early morning hour that was making him appear so fatigued? "She knows everything and nothing at the same time. She's all frustration, anger, and heart. She wants what she wants, and thinks what she thinks. There's no real reasoning, at least not at that age. She'll grow out of it."
"Yeah," Adam had agreed, the word nearly an inaudible groan. Eyes glistening with some unknown emotion, he seemed to have so much more to say than what he eventually did. "You have no idea how much I wish it could be that easy."
Ben wanted to ask what that meant. He didn't, because something about the glint in Adam's eyes told him he already knew, and what he didn't know, he could easily discern if he would just find the courage to look upon the past honestly. His past. Will's past. Peggy's past too. They were all interconnected now, forming a menacing web of cause and effect, buried secrets and ugly truths. Alongside this realization Ben couldn't deny another: Peggy had been right about yet another thing. Memories could hold as much pain as the moment they were born from. There were some things destined to ever improve with time, the wounds they carved inside a person's heart too deep to be allowed to heal. They could be ignored, for years, they could. But they were always there, lurking, waiting for the most inopportune moments to make themselves known.
And like Peggy, Ben found himself escaping to the Running D to sit alone and think about how things had been before and how they were now, so he could make sense of it all. He needed to make sense of it all. He needed to look at all the things he had carefully avoided seeing before.
Ben hadn't really been angry at Adam for leaving or returning. He had never really been angry at Adam for anything. He had been angry because he didn't want to think about the past, a nearly impossible feat while his oldest son's presence, both six years ago and now, seemed to declare such a thing necessary.
Adam had always been so skeptical of Will, seeming to know so much more about his cousin's moral character than he had business to, and even now, his skepticism lived on, though it was Ben's intentions that it had been transferred to.
Rightly so.
Ben had earned his son's distrust. He may not have followed directly in his father's footsteps when it came to dealing with his own sons. He did not choose to break them as boys, beating them into submission over the tiniest of wrongs. No, he had waited until his oldest son had become a man and then he had destroyed him with words. Even so, the result was the same. Ben had once left his father's home in the very same way Adam had left his own. He had left without saying goodbye or looking back; he had left with no intention of ever returning. There was a glaring difference, however, Ben had held true to his vow to never return. He had not seen his father again. He had not told him when he began his journey west, or when he settled in the Nevada territory. He didn't want him to be privy to any of his successes. He certainly would not have dared trust him to care for any of his grandchildren.
But Adam was different.
From the very beginning, he was always destined to be stronger than any of them. More righteous, more steadfast, more… pure, somehow. Oh, he had his weaknesses and he had his faults but none of those seemed powerful enough to rival his goodness. None of them should have been allowed to matter. They never truly mattered, Ben had only acted like they did. His focus on Adam had been driven by fear, an innate desire to protect the secrets lurking in the past. By protecting the past, he had inadvertently been protecting someone and neglecting someone else. He had protected Will and it was Peggy who had paid the staggering cost. That was what she knew, Ben was certain of it. It was how she remembered both Will and himself that lent to her difficult disposition and discourteous statements. And now it wasn't what she knew that bothered Ben the most, it was how much of it she had shared with Adam.
What did his son know now that he hadn't before? About Ben. About Will. About himself?
It was despicable how the past and the truth had been easier to ignore when Adam was gone, because Will and Peggy had been gone too. Now, Adam and Peggy were back and there would be no ignoring anything. It would all need to be spoken about eventually, dealt with in a proper, permanent way. Adam and Ben couldn't dance around things forever, and Peggy didn't seem interested in dancing around it at all. She was the most direct of all of them, as belligerent as she was. Ben and Adam could ignore each other for as long as they wanted to, but they could not ignore her, or what had been done to her. The ways in which Will had learned to deal with children from how his own father had reared him.
Ohio, Ben thought, the memories threatening to overwhelm him completely. Will. Adam. Will and Adam. They had been inseparable that summer in Ohio. Thick as thieves despite their tender ages. They had been more than cousins; they were the best of friends. Adam had once said he didn't remember that time; Ben didn't know how his son could have ever forgotten it.
As small boys, people confused Adam and Will for siblings; they used to call them brothers, their family resemblance a little too striking to ignore. It was a convenience of sorts, this label that was so freely used, half the people who said it had no idea how close it had come to becoming true, not once but twice. The first time had been the less difficult of the two to think of; it was right after Elizabeth had died. It was the subsequent one Ben still had trouble acknowledging. He didn't want to think about it. What could or would have been had he followed through. Had not seen what he eventually did. If he had happened to look just one moment later, then it would have been too late, and for Will, it already was.
Even back then I think we both knew it was already too late, Peggy's despondent statement sang in Ben's ears, rising from his memory to taunt him. She had been speaking about Adam and the day he had taken her away from Will. It was a fateful day and decision, one that had fallen on Adam to make because his father refused to. Still, it did not mean Ben had not known what was going on. He had known; he just hadn't yet decided what to do.
It was a delicate situation from the start. He couldn't remove Peggy from Will's care without making an already difficult situation much worse. Once he did remove her from Will, he knew she could never be returned to him, and the truth of why was almost too much for him to handle. It would have been too much for Adam to handle—Ben had known that then. Adam was already having difficulty adjusting, coping with life after his fall and broken engagement; he was already restless and unhappy, how would knowledge of the truth have helped that?
It wouldn't have helped anything. It would have made everything worse. How Adam saw Will, his father, and even himself. Adam had always been so dependable, strong, and loyal; he had been a marvelous big brother, always so wonderful with children. He didn't love easily, that was true, but when he did it was forever. It was for good. How would he have felt if he would have known the truth about Will? How would he have felt knowing he could have saved the child he loved from his cousin's brutal hand if only he would have married her mother who he did not?
Laura hadn't been the one to call off the engagement, that had been Adam; he had thought he was doing her a service, and maybe, in the beginning he had, because she and Will did have feelings for each other, a voltaic fondness that was stronger than anything that had existed between Laura and Adam. Will and Laura were married, and then, all at once, something changed. Things were rocky and volatile from the beginning of their marriage; this Ben knew because of something Adam didn't. Or, at least, he hadn't before. Laura had come to Ben. She had asked him for help. She had said she feared Will. She refused to speak in detail about the matter, but the fear in her eyes said more than words ever could. It was then Ben knew the truth—what he had always known perhaps, since finding Will alive in Pine City and smuggling him back to the Ponderosa. His nephew had been in trouble then; no, it wasn't just that. Will had been trouble.
Like his father before him, Will had developed delinquent habits that would not make his life an easy one. He didn't know how to stay or leave; he didn't know how to treat people, not really. He presented an easy-going disposition, a placid smile, but below the surface lurked an aggravated darkness. He was very charming and very dangerous. And for the first time in a long time, Ben had felt a peculiar fear awaken inside of his heart. How much of the past was Will interested in dredging up? And how much of it did he hold Ben responsible for?
Will never talked about the past. At least, not at first. No, like Adam, he pretended not to remember; he masqueraded as a normal man to put Ben at ease. It wasn't until after Will and Laura were married that Ben saw the first real glimpse of something else. Just like in Ohio, it was a moment in time that could have been so easily missed. It was Peggy's panic that declared the truth. It was the way she had wandered from her parents' wedding reception, following and then clinging to Adam, demanding he vow not to disappear. There was something about the way the little girl so shrilly screamed; there was something about her agitated determination for Adam to remain close to her. To an outside eye, it would have been declared an overreaction; to Ben, it was a declaration of something else.
He couldn't blame Peggy for clinging to Adam. He was a good protector, strong and virtuous, always so willing to stand in front of whoever needed him to. That's what made him such a fitting lawman. In this particular instance, Ben knew immediately his oldest son could not become involved. He didn't want him to be. Adam had already seemed to have lost so much; Ben could not bear the thought of his son losing any more. He didn't want Adam to doubt his decision about Laura; he didn't want him to live with guilt. He wanted to protect his son from the brutal truth. Had Ben known at the time what would eventually come from the situation—the person who he was actually protecting by hiding this information—he wouldn't have done it. There were just some decisions that came at too high of a price to ever be fully paid.
There had been no visible bruises on Peggy's arms or legs, her face or neck, places that could easily be seen; Ben knew there would not be. He did not need to see them to verify his suspicion. History combined with his own body of memories declared the truth. John had always been careful too, exercising slight restraint their own father never had. Ben didn't need to see bruising to know what was going on. He didn't need Laura or Peggy to tell him anything to know the truth.
"You will not lay a violent hand on that child again," he had growled dangerously as he held Will's upper arm a little too tight. "Do you understand me?"
"I don't know what you're talking about."
Will had played stupid; he was always so good at that. The shame in his eyes declared he knew what his uncle was speaking of. And that shame seemed to be enough for a while, until it wasn't and Peggy began to cling to Adam again. Then Ben would talk to Will again. He told his nephew to take up a gentle hand when punishing his newfound daughter; he told himself that children were resilient. A handful of harsh punishments weren't enough to leave permanent marks. Peggy never had broken bones or visible scars. This was something that would pass. Will would figure out how to rear children appropriately and then everything would fall into place, and all this would become a distant memory. Things had been bad, but they could have been worse—or at least that's what Ben told himself.
Time seemed to pass slowly back then. There was so much to worry about. Adam's lingering back injury and discontented state of mind, Will's propensity to be violent to those he was supposed to love and protect. Peggy's determination to spend time with Adam, and Ben's intention to keep his son and his nephew's family as far apart as he could.
Adam couldn't know the truth. While Ben couldn't seem to control his nephew, he could at least protect his son. Then things started happening. One right after another, each event coming too quickly to fully comprehend or properly react to. Laura was with child, and then she was dead. And then, all at once, everything became much worse that it had been. Adam had been the one to find Laura's body, that fact coupled with her damning diary being shared among the townsfolk concocted an excruciatingly vandalizing narrative about oldest Cartwright son. Ben knew he hadn't dealt with that well; he had been angry at Adam because anger didn't work on Will.
"This will not continue," Ben had said to Will, time and time again, his voice a low, furious growl. Each event spurring the words to leave his lips were different; the outcome of the threat was always the same. Will didn't listen—he never listened—and in the end, Ben said to Adam everything he should have said to Will.
After Laura died things continued to deteriorate. Will drank too much, his actions becoming sloppy, leaving bruises on Peggy's arms. Adam's discontent with the life surrounding him compounded. And Ben's fear grew. He wondered what would become of all this? What would become of all of them?
Adam would eventually accuse him of picking sides. Of remaining loyal to Will over standing with his own son. Ben denied it, though he should not have. He should have explained instead. It was not loyalty that had bound him to Will. It was fear and guilt. Oh, lord, there was so much guilt. Things didn't have to be this way. If he would have been braver—if he could have been more like the man Adam was—then in Ohio he would have made the right decision too. He would have taken Will with them. He should have claimed that boy as his own and raised him as another son when his nephew was young, so he could have had a chance to grow into something other than he did. Instead, Will followed in the footsteps of his father and grandfather. Ben had failed everyone. It was difficult to truly condemn the people you love; especially when you felt like you had a hand in creating them, and when it was so much easier to just condemn yourself.
It was easier not to think about all these things when Adam was gone. Now that he was back, they would have to be spoken about eventually. Ben thought about the morning he had taken Jamie to the trailhead where he and Adam used to go and what had taken place up there, how Jamie had run to Adam and how his oldest son had looked at him the day after. Maybe Adam already knew more about the past than Ben was comfortable with. Maybe that was why he said what he did about stepping in between Jamie and his father if need be.
Tanning Jamie under such circumstances was wrong. It hadn't been abusive, but it was a mistake. As a father, Ben wished it could have been his only one. People believed he was moral and strong, and, most of the time, he was. What they didn't know is that Ben wished as a young man he could have been half as calm and brave as his oldest son. Ben's father, John, Ben, and Will, Adam was stronger than all of them—just as he was always destined to be. Just as Ben had wanted him to be.
"If you aren't going to help," a voice asked suddenly from behind him, "then why do you keep coming back here?"
Turning, Ben found Peggy peering down at him from atop her horse. "For the same reason you do," he said sadly.
She nodded as though she understood, then was quiet for a while as she looked between the house and the barn. "Sometimes you have to look back," she said softly. "Because you can't look at what's in front of you clearly until you do."
Ben thought the words a little too apt. "I should have helped you better back then," he said, memories still lingering in the forefront of his mind. "I should have found the courage to do what Adam did long before he had to do it."
"Doesn't matter."
"Yes, it does."
"No, it doesn't. It doesn't because it can't. Or… at least I don't want it to." She paused, biting her lower lip as she seemed to consider her own words. "I'm sorry I'm so rude to you," she added. "I don't want to be, sometimes the words just come out, you know?"
Ben did. He was well acquainted with anger that made a person's words jagged and impulsive.
"Sometimes I'm a little too defensive, and others I'm too protective," Peggy explained. "I don't know if it's because of what happened to me out here, or because of what Adam did about it, but I don't like people treating my family poorly. It riles me up something fierce, especially when I think the people who are doing it have no real reason to."
"I'm sorry, Peggy," Ben said, the apology coming easily. "I am. I'm sorry I didn't help you better years ago, and I'm sorry I can't help you now. I wish I could; I wish I could give you everything in this life that you deserve."
She stared at him briefly, then looked away again. Ben wondered if, like Adam, she had no interest in accepting or acknowledging his apology.
"Thank you," she said eventually. "I didn't want to hear that, but I think maybe I needed to." Looking at him once more, her expression softened and she exhaled a hearty breath. "So, I'm going to tell you something you don't want to hear but maybe need to. You think that what tore you and Adam apart was the way he felt about me. You think he chose being my father over being your son, but what you don't know is that he chose that monster over both of us. He chose Will over me, Eddie, and even himself."
"Eddie?"
"He didn't come back for the reason you think. He's lost his way again. He may not act like it, but he has. The things that used to give him faith he was on the right path are gone. Will is gone. Eddie is gone. He doesn't want to talk to you about those things, but he needs to."
Ben frowned. "What do you mean?"
Her face contorted with conflicted disappointment. "Please don't pretend like you don't know," she said softly, "because you and I both do. There was a darkness inside of Will, an anger that he tried to hide. Adam didn't know that until much later, because we didn't warn him. We made him find out on his own, and when he did something bad happened, and now I think maybe Adam is afraid a hint of the same darkness that was inside of Will is inside of him too." Her eyes drifted to the landscape. "You need to tell Adam you know what Will did out here, so Adam can tell you what he did, and then maybe you can make him understand that those things aren't the same, that he and Will are never going to be the same kind of people."
"How could he ever think that?" Ben asked, the idea making him feel out of breath. Did he foster that belief? Did his intensity and disapproval toward his son reinforce it? Of course, it had, a small voice in the back of his head whispered. You always had to challenge him on everything, didn't you? You thought you were making him strong, maybe you were weakening him instead. In the end, you tore him down with your bitter words; you drove him away from you. You never cleared the air. Even now, you haven't done that.
"Because of what Adam did," Peggy said. "Because of how things are. You don't know everything about him. Where he's been, or what he's done. You knew him before, but you don't know him now." She cast Ben a solemn gaze. "He didn't come back here to get yelled at and pushed around, made to feel worse than he already does."
"Then why did he come back?"
Maybe it was wrong to ask Peggy the question again, but that didn't stop it from leaving Ben's lips. It didn't stop him from needing to know, or struggling with how to proceed. Everything was so much easier when Adam was gone. Everything would have been so different had he never left, had Ben himself summoned the courage to speak with Adam before about all the things demanding to be shared now. He had lied to his son and himself. He had never been worried about Peggy after Adam took her; he had never held his son responsible for doing so, not really. He had been ashamed for not protecting Peggy himself, and he had lived in fear of a day when either of them would return. He was afraid of what they would know and what they wouldn't, how their mutual memories of the past would shape the future.
"Do you really want me to answer that question?" Peggy asked.
"Yes." Ben shook his head. "No."
"Then I won't. But you should remember something: sometimes no matter how bad some things get left and how many others change, in the end we all really want the same thing. When you're really hurting over something bad, sometimes you just want to see your pa. At least, I always do."
Ben opened his mouth to reply; this time, he thought better of it and closed it again. There was no reason to draw attention to the flaw of the statement, or pick at old wounds. Maybe that was why Peggy was so insistent to reclaim the Running D. She wanted to be close to where her father had been buried because she thought it would make her feel better than she currently did.
"I know what you're thinking," Peggy said knowingly. "But you're wrong. You see, my father and my pa are different people. Frank Dayton was my father; Adam Cartwright is my pa. I know you wanted to ask before what he was to me and I didn't tell you, because I wasn't sure I wanted you to know."
"Now you do."
"I don't know. I'm not sure I know what I want. I think I used to, but now I'm not sure."
"Because Adam decided to come back here."
"No, because, suddenly everything is so different than what it was." For a moment, she appeared thoughtful, then she shook her head and took a deep breath. "I should go," she said firmly. "I'm not supposed to be here, not anymore."
Ben did not know if she was speaking of the territory or the Running D, and he wouldn't dare ask for fear of dissolving the magic of the moment that had allowed the two of them to speak so honestly and freely.
Peggy rode away without further word. Ben stood in place a few moments more, thinking of everything he was sure he knew and all that was certain he did not. Still, for the first time in a long time, he knew exactly what he needed to do. He needed to acknowledge the past; he needed to share what he had done and why. He needed to tell Adam the truth.
TBC