NOW:

"You… you… you conniving old pirate!" Ben exclaimed, his fist coming into contact with the top of Roy Coffee's desk.

Leaning back in his chair, Roy was neither intimidated nor amused. "It ain't like you own the territory or have any say over who comes and goes."

"I know that."

"Then what's the problem?" Crossing his arms, Roy appraised Ben thoughtfully. He was still the acting sheriff, for now, the name of his designated replacement having not been declared or approved by the town council. They were in a strange kind of limbo; Roy Coffee, Virginia City, and Ben himself were all on the cusp of a change still too vague to be realized. "I knew you'd be shocked to see Adam again, but I thought, after it wore off, you'd be happy, maybe even a bit relieved."

"Happy," Ben snorted, repeating the word beneath his breath.

He was far from happy, but if he were being honest then he would have to admit he was relieved—if only ever so slightly. Roy was right: six years was a long time. All those days he had spent wondering where his eldest son was, all those nights he had spent worrying about his well-being. Was he happy? Was he safe? Where had his anger and frustration taken him? Had he found all the things he had never obtained in his father's home?

"Yeah," Roy drawled. "Happy. I knew you'd be angry, that's why I apologized in advance. I had hoped your initial feelings on the matter would fade and allot you room to feel something else, or at least allow you to think of not why Adam left but why he returned."

Pursing his lips, Ben nearly snorted again. If Roy believed the thought of why Adam had returned had not crossed his mind then he was wrong. The thought consumed him, weighing heavily on his heart and mind. His disappointment in himself rivaled that he felt toward his oldest son. His reaction to Adam's reappearance was achingly similar to how he had reacted to his disappearance. He had failed to speak to Adam back then because his anger had prevented it. It was this same anger that had prevented him from speaking to Adam the night prior.

In a room full of people, Adam's sudden reappearance had been as glaring as his extended absence. How many times had Ben hoped such a thing would happen? How many times had he dreamt of such a moment? Only to be presented with the opportunity and fail once again.

Seeking respite outside in the cool night air, Ben had taken a moonlit walk and the time to allow his temper to cool. When he finally returned to the house, he had found most of the guests, including Adam and Sheriff Coffee, gone. They had taken the whiskey with them. The bottle which had been presented in celebration now sat empty on the side of Roy's desk. Though its presence had been confusing before, it made a little too much sense now.

How had he missed its importance? How could he have forgotten Adam was the one who favored whiskey? With all the things he had recalled whilst drinking the harsh liquid, why had he forgotten the most glaring fact? It was Roy who had brought both the bottle and Adam into his home; it was he who alluded to much more than had been actually said.

"Looks like the two of you shared that drink last night," Ben said, his attention frozen on the bottle.

Following Ben's gaze, Roy nodded. "We did."

"What were you celebrating?"

"Same thing I told you we would."

"New beginnings."

"And closin' the door on the past," Roy said. "Change is coming, Ben. You best be ready when it does."

Ben dismissed the statement with a shake of his head. He neither had the time nor the desire to think of the future when the potential problems of the present remained so glaring. "How did you do it?" he asked, giving voice to a question he had promised himself he would not ask.

"Do what?"

"How did you find Adam? What did you say to him? How did you get him to come back?"

"You say that like he was a hard man to find. He was not. You just needed to know in what circles to look."

"What circles were those?"

Roy shook his head. "If you want to know where he's been or what he's been up to then you best ask him. As a matter of fact, if you want to know why he's come back then that's another thing you can speak to him directly about. I ain't interested in being your go-between."

Ben's annoyance was palpable and immediate. What was this apparent precipitous bond between the sheriff and his errant eldest son? How long had it existed and why had it ever been forged?

"Did he tell you to say that?" Ben asked.

"No."

"Then why are you?"

"You had an opportunity to speak to him last night. You could have asked all your questions and had all the answers you wanted, but you did not. You walked away instead."

"Why are you avoiding my question?"

"I'm not. I'm just hopin' that maybe if you think about why you walked out on Adam last night, then maybe you can find it in your heart to understand why he walked out on you those years ago."

"I thought you had no interest in acting as a go-between."

"I don't," Roy said. "That's just an easy observation. I've known you for a long time, Ben, and I've known Adam for just as long. I watched him grow from a sensitive, inquisitive boy to an admirable man. It's been six years. This town has all but forgotten what happened back then. Don't you think it's time to forgive your son for something that couldn't have been helped?"

Lips forming a tight line, Ben refrained from answering, not because he did not have anything to say in response but because he no longer wanted to continue the conversation. Roy was right: he should not be acting as a harbinger between father and son. He should not be involving himself in family matters at all. What did he know about what had taken place between them? The truth about how Adam had left or why? Ben was not what Roy knew; he could not be sure because he could not conceive of a reason Adam would come home at Sheriff Coffee's request but not that of his own father.

You wrote him, Ben reminded himself. You wrote him a letter which he should have received, you told him all the things you should have said before he left. You told him everything, and he said nothing—he wrote nothing—in return.

Years had passed with nothing.

No letter had come from Adam acknowledging the things his father had written, advising of his current whereabouts or endeavors. For six long years there was nothing and then all of a sudden, out of seemingly nowhere, Adam reappeared at Roy's behest.

How had Coffee known where to find him? It did not make sense for Adam to sever contact with his family and maintain it with the lawman. Ben did not want it to make sense; and he was tired of thinking about it. Of painstakingly considering every agonizing unknown in a way he had promised he would not.

The angry determination he had felt, so fixed and resolute beneath the cover of moonlight the night before, had been chased away by the morning sun; there were just too many things to think about, the most glaring of which was the way Adam had looked. He had aged slightly in the time he was gone; the years had left their mark, etching lines into his tanned face and leaving hints of silver scattered in his beard.

His beard.

Taking a deep breath, Ben hung his head slightly. He had never known his son to exhibit facial hair, at least not for extended periods of time. Adam was always far too particular to allow for such a thing, a sentiment that seemed to have softened with the passing of time. Ben could not help wondering what other sentiments had softened alongside this one.

Was Adam still a vivacious reader? Did he still devour any and all printed words at his disposal? Or had age shifted his attention? Had his own life experiences calmed his need to hear about the adventures of others—both real and imagined?

There was so much Ben did not know, and so much more he questioned if he ever truly would.

Why had Adam not answered the letter? Why would he come back now? After all this time, when things were so different than they once had been. Joe and Hoss were decidedly men now, and Ben had invited a rowdy teenage boy into the tight folds of the family. Jamie, a young fiery teen, in both personality and complexion. New friends, people whom Adam had never heard of or met had settled in the territory and others had gone; they had either moved on, left by their own volition or their lives had come to an end. Laura and Will had both been gone for nearly as long as Adam and Peggy...

Peggy.

Closing his eyes, Ben forced himself to abandon the painful thought. It would not leave him so easily. It could not be cast aside now that it had been remembered. There had been a great deal of pain prior to Adam's departure, an overwhelming sense of failure and loss that had encompassed the whole Cartwright family. Lives had been lost, loved ones buried, and grief pushed down and ignored. Blame had been easy to cast back then; it had been too easy to look at the decisions of one and note how their influence had led to such painful outcomes. Ben had not meant to blame anyone, though he knew he had.

"Did Adam...?" Ben began, his voice no more than a gruff whisper. "...talk to you about anything that happened back then?"

The question hung in the air for a moment while neither man looked at the other.

"Like I said, I ain't interested in being no go-between," Roy eventually answered. "If you have a question for your son about how he feels about his past compunctions then you best be asking him yourself. It took a lot of courage for him to come back here, I hope you realize that. He's not the same man you knew way back when, I hope you realize that, too."

Ben was unable to form a response.

"For what it's worth, I am sorry," Roy said, his voice softening with slight regret. "I knew bringing Adam back here wasn't going to be easy for either of you. But I don't regret doing so. It was the right decision. I can see that, and, eventually, I'm sure the both of you will come to see it, too."

Ben's brows furrowed. "The both of us?"

The thought that Adam would have come back without deciding to do so himself had not occurred to him. He had assumed Adam had come because he wanted to.

"Come on now, you don't really think he was eager to come back, do you?" Roy asked. "He was not. He has his own reservations about what people still might think about him, about what you yourself might still think. Like I said, it took a lot of nerve for him to come back and stand in front of you after not doing so for so long. It took a lot of strength to watch you walk away without saying so much as a word."

"I was surprised."

Ben was not sure why he was trying to defend himself. What did he care what Coffee or anyone else thought about his reaction to his son? He should not, and he did not. He was not the one who had left. He was not the one who had suddenly reappeared, walking through the front door of the family house as though no time had passed at all.

"You can't fault me for that," he added. "You could have warned me and then maybe I would have been prepared to see him; maybe I would have reacted differently than how I did."

Maybe he would have had the strength to gather his son in his arms. To hold him close in a way the passing years and the distance between them had not allowed. It was good Hoss and Joe had reacted warmly to Adam's appearance; it was a blessing his return had been celebrated by his younger brothers—even if the youngest of them had gone missing.

Jamie's extended absence from the party had gone overlooked. Ben had noticed it, but others had not. Adam had come and gone while Jamie was elsewhere—doing god only knew what with god only knew who. It was not until morning, when the family gathered around the breakfast table, that Jamie had been made aware of who he had missed.

The boy had not seemed concerned by news of an older brother he had never met. In fact, he had seemed too preoccupied with something else entirely to give anything the family spoke of much thought—some teenage struggle or impending trouble that remained elusive to the rest of them, no doubt. His youngest son's disinterest in his eldest son had led Ben to consider a new series of questions. Was Adam aware of Jamie's existence? Did he know he had an adopted brother? Did he even care?

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you about Adam comin' home," Roy said. "I didn't want to ruin the surprise."

"Just like you didn't want to have a party for yourself. Just like you showed up with that bottle of whisky in hand. You gathered us together; you set the tone of the party; you created this situation and now you have the nerve to act as though you had nothing to do with it."

"I ain't doing that."

"Then what are you doing?" Ben asked.

Eyes gleaming with amusement, Roy's lips curled into a knowing grin. "Bein' a conniving old pirate, of course."

Grunting, Ben failed to see the current situation in a humorous light.

"Alright," Roy conceded. "You want to know what I'm doing then I'll tell you. Although, I am surprised you have not already figured it out yourself. I've been the sheriff of this town for a long time. At this point in my life, I've spent more years protecting it than not. I lost my Mary a long time ago, and I never had any children." He looked thoughtfully at the surrounding room. "How many hours and days have I spent in this building? I sat in this chair as weeks became months and months became years. I've looked upon these walls for so long that I think I've memorized every inch of them. My time in this place will soon come to an end; I'll hand this office over to someone new. Big changes always have a way of making old men sentimental, of looking at old struggles in new light. I'll be honest, what happened between you and yours never did set well with me. I don't know the specifics of it, but I think I know enough."

Ben wondered what Roy thought about the conflict that had become wedged between him and his oldest son, how it had appeared out of seemingly nowhere and grown at a relentless pace until it became too large to dismiss or reconcile. Though years had passed, it seemed unlikely this conflict could have changed. It would not have changed, because nothing had been resolved. Adam had left, making such a thing impossible.

"It's interesting the things we take on in this life," Roy continued thoughtfully. "The things we choose to do not knowing those very same things will eventually become who we are. We become what we do. I've been a sheriff for a long time; I've spent years trying to right the wrongs of others and helping people take accountability for the past and begin anew, whether they wanted to or not. I've already asked you to forgive me and I hope eventually you do. The success and continued safety of this town are my legacy. The people who live here are my family, Ben, yourself and your sons included. I'd do anything for my family. I saw an opportunity to make something that had been broken whole and I took it, but whether you and Adam decide to begin anew is going to be up to the both of you. If you want to know more about Adam, where he's been or why he's back, then you need to ask him. I've done what I can, and I've said all I'm going to."

Ben thought for a moment. "Where is he?" he asked. "If I did want to speak to him, then where can he be found?"

Despite their conversation, this was a question that appeared to take Roy by genuine surprise. "He didn't stick around," he said. "He had some things to attend to that took him away. If all goes well, then I reckon he'll be back in town around the same time you will." He smiled knowingly. "Ain't that just convenient. You can have a few days to think about what you want to say and a reason to come to town outside of seeking a conversation with him. When you just happen to come across him again, you can play it off however you like."

"When exactly will I be returning to town?" Ben grunted. "And for what reason?"

"End of the week, I assume. Although, you'd really know more about that than me. You and the rest of the town council better meet about my replacement soon. Like I said, my time here is quickly coming to a close."

It was such an obvious fact; it was surprising it had been so easily forgotten. "We don't have plans to meet as of right now," Ben said. "I'll speak to the other council members; we'll set a meeting so you can officially give your resignation and recommendation for replacement, if you have one in mind."

"I do."

Ben was grateful for the shift in conversation. "Good," he said, his tone transforming as he easily slipped into his own administrative role. "With as much as you care about this town, I'm assuming this lawman is experienced, trustworthy, and reputable."

"He is."

"Is he known?"

"Not to many around here, but he is quite known in the right circles."

"Good," Ben repeated. Suddenly finding himself with so many things to think about, it was a relief to know he would not have to worry about this one. Roy's love for Virginia City was not to be rivaled; he would leave his office in capable hands.

"It's nearing the end of the school day," Roy commented absently, his gaze settling upon the front door. "You've spent enough time wondering about what your oldest son has been up to, I think this energy might be better spent on your youngest. If I were you, I'd swing by the schoolhouse on your way out of town, just to make sure that boy is doing what you think he oughta be."

Ben nearly groaned. "What did Jamie do?"

"Nothin' yet. Still, you might want to keep an eye on one or two of his newfound friends. I'm sure I don't have to remind you how destructive certain influences can be on youths who are feeling particularly lost. Sometimes people think they're acting as friends; they have no idea they're only fostering further unrest."

Though he was grateful for the warning, Ben could not suppress his frown as he nodded and took his leave, setting his attention on walking to the schoolhouse on the edge of town to verify Jamie's whereabouts and the quality of his friends himself.

TBC