BEFORE:
Adam Cartwright stared at the road in front of him.
He had traveled it more times than he could possibly count. If someone asked him to draw a map of it, he could with his eyes closed and dominant hand tied behind his back. Hell, he could do it in his sleep.
The road was a well-worn path which led travelers in only two directions; at the end of one was a small collection of people and buildings that composed a settlement called Virginia City, and at the end of the other was his home, the ranch house of the Ponderosa where he, his father, and brothers lived. They were both decent, as far as places went. Full of good times and people. Both were variable and predictable in their own ways. They contained memories of love and happiness, struggle and sadness. Any man would consider himself lucky if he was able to travel this particular road with any regularity, but it was not until this very moment Adam understood he no longer wanted to.
He had not asked for the realization to come to him. He had not been seeking the thought. It had come anyway. This sudden understanding, small and needling, inexplicable and glaring; it was as startling as it was unwelcome and impossible to ignore once conceived of. When it first occurred to him, he had no choice but to guide Sport off the road so they could linger alongside it as he gave it proper consideration.
Adam tilted his head, his mouth falling slightly agape as he stared at the dusty path, the thought echoing in his mind once more. He did not want to travel in either direction this road would take him. He neither wanted to return to a town where his last name had become so prominent, nor to a place where the men who shared it dwelled. He did not want to be where he was; he did not want to be who he was.
If forced to explain why he thought such a thing he would not be able to. There were more emotions than logic at work. He knew there was more to this realization. Things he had convinced himself he would never think about, underlying feelings he had been careful to ignore and overwhelming desires he had never allowed himself to dwell on. And, now, suddenly, subconscious reasons and memories had collided, leaving him feeling the way he did. He had pushed them down for as long as he could; he had pretended for longer than he wanted to. He questioned if he would be capable of continuing to pretend at all.
Things had not always been this way; he had not always felt this way. At one time things had been different; he had been different, a bothersome thought like this seeming so far away, so beyond anything he could conceive of. A year ago, he could not have had such a thought; he would not have been capable of it. Things had been different then. He had been different. He had not yet had this thought that seemed destined to leave him so changed.
Had he been happy then? He was not sure.
His father certainly had his opinions on the matter and if they were to be believed, then, no, Adam had not been truly happy. During the period of time when he had been betrothed to Laura Dayton and somewhat of a father to her daughter, Peggy, Adam had been complacent. Not happy. He had not been happy before the sudden arrival of his cousin, Will Cartwright, and he had not been happy afterward. Of course, back then, Will was nothing more than an annoyance, of sorts; someone to be acknowledged but not listened to. Someone whose actions had little bearing on anything to do with Adam himself.
It was not like that anymore.
Will's attention toward Laura had been convenient, albeit almost annoyingly so. Even in his most morose moments, Adam had to admit, if only to himself, the truth. He had not wanted to marry Laura. He had not wanted a life beside her. They would not have made each other happy; they bickered too much to make such a thing possible for long. Still, he had not expected the abrupt cancellation of their impending union to make him quite so sad. He had not expected their decision to impact someone else so negatively.
Shamefully, he was certain neither he nor Will nor even Laura had thought about how their decision—the sudden, seemingly inexplicable swapping of beaus, the man who would marry Laura and become Peggy's new father—would affect Laura's daughter at all. They were all too caught up in their own feelings to truly consider those of anyone else.
Finally professing their love for each other, Laura and Will had been overjoyed, and Adam had been relieved. Of course, given the accident—that dreadful fall which had led to the injury to his back—he had his fair share of burdens at the time. Though he had summoned the strength to stand and walk in company of both Laura and Will whilst demanding they acknowledge their love for one another, it was a chivalrous display that had not come without cost. He had stood and walked that day, but it took nearly a week to summon the energy to do it again. It had taken another two months for him to recover enough to truly stand on his own two feet for extended periods of time, and it had taken longer to convince Pa to allow him to have any time alone. And throughout all that it was easy to dismiss how his actions or those of Will and Laura had affected Peggy.
It was impossible to remain blind to such things now.
Though Laura and Will were happy, Peggy was not. This was a fact that was mammoth and glaring. Peggy did not like Will, and she loved Adam. She wanted things to be different than they were. This was an odd thing for Adam to think about as he stared at the road, because now he knew did not want things the way they were either.
Even so, he and Peggy had different complaints. Growing too attached to the idea that Adam would be her father, Peggy was struggling to find the desire for Will to fill the role that Adam had so easily slipped into. It was not until today, coming upon this road and this moment, that Adam realized he was struggling with something, too; he had his own complicated feelings about his father and home. He had not asked for these thoughts to come to him; he had not wanted to think of them at all. But now that he had, they could not be dismissed or ignored.
"Howdy, stranger," came a small voice from behind him.
Turning in his saddle, Adam found Peggy sitting atop Traveler, watching him from a few paces away.
"Peggy," Adam said, his brows furrowing beneath the brim of his hat. "What are you doing here? You should be in school at this hour."
Shrugging in an indifferent manner, Peggy remained quiet. It was only when Adam had begun to believe she wasn't going to speak that she finally opened her mouth once more. "What are you doing out here?" she asked.
"Thinking," Adam said.
"About what?"
"Things."
"What kind of things?"
"Grown up things." Turning back around, he set his attention on the road once more. Peggy's timing was impeccable. It was almost as if she knew he had needed a distraction. "You didn't answer my question. Why aren't you in school?"
"Why aren't you moving?" she countered as she directed Traveler to close the gap between them. Pulling him to a stop beside Adam and Sport, she looked up expectantly.
Adam shook his head. "No reason," he said. At least not any she needed to be privy to. "Are you going to answer my question since I answered yours?"
"You didn't answer my question," she said simply.
Adam smiled in spite of his mood. Peggy had always been intuitive and clever, both traits that had been undeniably sharpened in the passing year. She was nearly eight now, though sometimes that was difficult to believe. She looked younger and often acted older, both characteristics that could be attributed to the influence of her mother's youth, no doubt.
"Well, I'll answer you if you answer me," he said. He had never lied to her. If she was in need of a more direct answer then he would not deny her one. He had never been good at denying her much of anything; his fondness for her would not allow it.
"Okay," she agreed. "You first."
"Okay," Adam repeated softly. "I was thinking about this road."
"That's it?" Peggy scoffed.
"That's it."
"I don't believe you."
"You don't have to believe me," Adam countered. "But now you have to tell me why you're out here since I told you."
"You're not going to believe me either."
Shifting his gaze, Adam looked at her and finally took note of her gloomy disposition. The years he had spent chasing after and shepherding his younger brothers had sharpened his perceptions and intuition when it came to childhood angst. He was a good listener, a good advice giver, and he was accustomed to helping when it was so obviously needed. "Maybe I don't have to believe you," he said. "Maybe you just need to say whatever is bothering you aloud."
"It won't help."
"How do you know if you don't try?"
"I already tried." Staring absently at the road, Peggy gripped Traveler's reins in a tight, pink fist. "I told Mommy and she got mad, and then she told Will and he got mad too. He doesn't listen the way you do. He doesn't even try."
"I'm sure he tries," Adam assured, though he questioned whether this was actually true.
He and Will were different people; as men they seemed to have little in common outside their shared last name. Their respective childhoods were as differing as the fathers who had raised them. Though in early childhood Will had been provided a stable home in which to grow, his father's love had always been variable. Adam's experience had been starkly opposite. It was these things that shaped their differences, leaving their weaknesses and strengths glaring to anyone who dared compare them.
Will did not know how to rear children because he had rarely been around them. He did not know how to glean the importance of listening and giving advice because he had not had siblings. And he did not know how to speak to Peggy because he had not put in the time to win her over or truly get to know her. He expected from her what his father had expected from him: respect and steady obedience. These were both fine things for a man to expect from his daughter. Adam had to admit there was little difference between Will's expectations of Peggy and what he would have required from her himself. But he easily found fault in the way in which Will had gone about obtaining them. Peggy was right. Will did not listen to her; he did not try.
It was not wise to refuse to listen to a child whom one had no real history with. It was not prudent to automatically demand respect and obedience from a child who had not wanted a union between their last remaining parent and someone who could almost be described as a stranger. It made everything more difficult for everyone involved. Certain allotments were needed with behavior; the situation needed to be approached with care. Adam knew that. He wondered why Will and Laura did not know it, too.
"He doesn't," Peggy insisted. "And Mommy doesn't try because he doesn't try."
"Do you try?"
Peggy shrugged.
"Let me guess," Adam said. "Sometimes you do and sometimes you don't."
"I guess that's true."
"What did you say to them?"
"When?"
"When you tried to talk and they didn't listen."
Peggy was reluctant. "I don't want to say," she whispered, her eyes wide. "I don't want anyone else to know. Not yet, at least."
"Why not?"
"Because I don't want anything else to change. There's been so much change; things should stay the same for a while."
"Is that why you're out here?" Adam asked.
Swallowing thickly, Peggy nodded. "I didn't want to go to school. I don't want to go sit in the schoolhouse around a bunch of kids who don't know what I do. I didn't want to go into town and pretend. I can't go home this early without getting into trouble. I don't want to go home at all."
Tilting his head, Adam peered down at her, completely taken aback by what she had said. How could their reasoning for lingering in the same place at the same be so similar? How could her feelings be so like his?
"I didn't come looking for you," Peggy said. "But I guess I'm happy you're here. I told you the truth. Are you going to tell me what you were thinking about the road?"
Adam shook his head. It would not do her any good to know the person she was counting on for direction could not guide himself. He did not want to go home either, for reasons not dissimilar from her own. He and Pa had argued early that morning, again; it was an impassioned conversation that had not yet come to an end. Lord knew, he loved his father's ferocity, but he would be lying if he denied how tiresome it could become. It was frustrating, eroding, and occasionally emasculating to be a grown son of such a substantial man with such specific standards and expectations. He did not have autonomy and independence outside of his father. He lived with him and worked for him; he had existed in Ben Cartwright's shadow the entirety of his life. Closely approaching the wrong side of thirty, Adam was acutely aware society dictated he should have been someone's father by now; instead he was too busy still being a son.
There was a time when he could not have dreamed of wanting more than what his father could provide. A time when he could not have conceived of feeling how he did. Still, this day had come in spite of what he had once thought or believed, and now there was nothing he could do to change it. Nothing would be enough to quiet this thought now that it had been awoken. Nothing would ever be enough to keep him where he was.
"Okay." Peggy nodded as though she understood. "Then what do you want to do?"
Adam nearly laughed. "Do?"
"Yeah, do. I can't go home and for some reason you won't."
"I was busy before you happened upon me."
"Yeah, staring at a road. That's not busy. That's something else."
Taken aback once more, Adam looked at the road warily. Neither it nor his thoughts had changed. He did not want to go back to town and he did not want to go home. It was a terrible realization to suddenly have. He had not wanted to think about it; still, it had come anyway. It was as startling as it was unwelcome and impossible to ignore once it had entered his mind. It consumed him, holding him in place beside a road he no longer wanted to travel, and then Peggy had appeared, her current worries somehow mirroring his own. And that was development he did not want to think about.
"Wanna race?" he whispered, the quiet familiar offering passing his lips with little thought.
If he would have thought about what he was saying rather than yearning for what the words would lead him to—or away from—he would not have said them. He would have done something different than what he did. Maybe he would have accompanied her into town and ensured she made her way to school. Or maybe he would have sent her home and told her to face the conversation waiting for her. Then maybe he could have found the desire to do the same. But he did not do any of those things. He did something else instead.
"Okay," Peggy agreed. "Can I pick the way?"
"Sure, just as long as we don't follow the road."
Lifting her hand, Peggy indicated at the rolling hills in the distance. "On the count of three?"
"On the count of three."
They spoke the countdown in unison, their quiet voices blending together to become nothing more but whispers quickly lost in the breeze. They lingered for three short moments and then they were gone. They left no trail to follow, no hoofprints in the dust on that dreaded road.
Neither of them dared to look back.
TBC