BEFORE:

The interior of the saloon was dark, the corners of the small room too shadowy to decipher much of anything.

The bar, however, was lit, encompassed in a muted halo that ran the distance between the ceiling and the floor. The shelving on the wall was empty; there were no bottles or glasses to be seen. Time had proven to Adam that such things were not required in dreams. A man could still drink his fill without them.

The strumming of a guitar filled the air, a familiar, plucky tune that Adam recognized immediately. "You're a little early this year," he commented wryly. "My birthday isn't for another two weeks or so."

"Another twelve days to be exact." Ed Payson said. He stood in front of Adam on the other side of the bar. A bottle of expensive, imported whiskey and twin glasses sat in between them, a gift that once had been annually presented to Adam by his father; a tradition that Ed saw fit to continue. "Even so, I'm surprised you remember. You've always forgotten about it in years past. I have to remind you, every year when you dream of me, this place, and an expensive bottle of whiskey waiting for you on the bar top. The second you see it all, you start panicking, thinking something bad happened while you were sleeping and you've been left for dead."

Adam tilted his head. It was not that unreasonable of a thought. After all, the first time Ed visited him he was close to death; his body was in the company of Jamie and Tom Hunter as his mind wandered to this illusory saloon, a place Ed Payson had crafted for him in his dreams. Though their first visit had been facilitated by serious injury, subsequent ones were not. Even so, Ed did not bring him here frequently, rather their visits had been reserved for special occasions.

"How old are you going to be this year?" Ed asked.

"Does it really matter?" Adam asked. "A man hits forty and kinda quits counting after that."

"If I remember correctly, you turned forty last year."

"The year before."

Ed grinned. "So, you are keeping track."

Shrugging, Adam reached for the whiskey, uncorked the bottle, and poured a generous amount into both glasses. Sliding one in front of Ed, he kept the other, draining its contents in two long drinks before refilling it. He sipped the subsequent pour, the effects of the first setting in, leaving his surroundings feeling slightly more illusory than they already did. He did not drink much these days—in dreams or otherwise. His job demanded he remain alert, ready, and able to defend himself and others if need be.

Tonight, he was grateful for the dream, drink, and company. Although he had grown accustomed to being alone, sometimes it was nice to talk to someone who was not trying to carefully dodge his questions. It was always nice to see an old friend. To sit in the comfortable silence. He and Ed did not need to speak about anything; however, that did not mean they would not.

"What do you reckon about that old man?" Ed finally asked.

Adam feigned ignorance. "What old man?"

"What old man?" Ed snorted. "How many old men have you been around lately? Abraham. Wallace Merrill's pa."

Adam shook his head. He had not given the old man much thought. What the man had said, conversely, he could not stop thinking about. This was something Ed was aware of; Adam was sure of that. Their past conversations had proven that death allotted ghosts certain liberties with information regarding the living. It was difficult to hide things from them, and downright impossible to lie when a question was asked outright.

"What about him?" Adam asked.

"Nothing about him, specifically. I'm talking about what he said to you. About being a good man and such."

"Why would you want to talk about that?"

"Because it's gnawing at you."

"It isn't."

"It is. The conversation left you troubled. You're not bothered so much about the first bit, what that old man had to say about his son, rather what he had to say about you."

"I'm not bothered by anything."

"Except for when you are," Ed said knowingly. "Come on, out with it now. You're traveling alone; you don't have anyone else to talk to about these things, so they sit on your heart and circle your mind. I'm here now, and I already know everything you don't want to say anyhow, so why don't you just talk about it. Let your old pal, Ed, lighten your load a bit."

Sighing, Adam resigned himself to concede. There was no point in lying to the dead. Of declining to say what they both already knew. "He said I was a good man because I had a mother to raise me that way," he admitted. "To soften my heart, make me caring and moral."

Boys raised up by men are just different, Abraham's words rang in his memory. Harder than rocks, more unkindly than feelin'.

"But I didn't," he added, his gaze finding and holding Ed's.

"If your heart is soft, if you're caring and moral, then that's the doing of someone else." Ed easily gleaned what Adam was careful not to say. "That conversation made you think of your pa, something that you long promised yourself you wouldn't do."

"No." Adam shook his head. "Not Pa."

"Your ma then." Ed nodded as though he understood; Adam knew he did.

"Elizabeth," Adam affirmed.

If calling the woman who had birthed him by her given name was an odd thing to do, affirmation of the strangeness would not make him amend the habit. When he was a boy, he thought of her as his mother; he remembered looking at her photograph and thinking of her as old. Now that he was a man, a father himself, he thought of her as something else. Nineteen was so young—too young to have one's life taken away. At the time of her death, Elizabeth had been nothing more than a youth masquerading as an adult.

"I have no memory of her," Adam continued. "I was born and she died. I never knew her; she only existed to me as a photograph. When I was a boy, I used to look at that photograph every morning and every night. I talked to it; I prayed to it. I asked Elizabeth to make me tall, strong, and kind. I asked her to help me grow into a man she would be proud of. When I became a little older, I quit praying to that photograph. I quit thinking of her with frequency. A boy reaches a certain age and begins to realize that it isn't the people he lost before he could know them that shape him into who he is, but the ones he still has around. Besides, I had just turned twelve and with the way things were going with my stepmother, Marie, let's just say I wasn't feeling like the kind of kid Elizabeth would be proud of."

"You were mean to her," Ed said simply.

"I was beyond mean. I was an unholy terror. I did things I don't want to remember; I said things that I will never forget. And Marie, man, she was so kind to me throughout it all. She weathered every storm I created; she loved me despite the person that I was. Thank god for that, though, because Pa sure didn't. There was a good six-month span when the only talking he and I did took place in the barn. I was in trouble all the time, from dawn until sunset. In trying to seek my father's attention I only found disobedience instead. I couldn't find the words to talk to him; he did not have the patience to deal with my endless indiscretions. We were like strangers, he and I. For so long he had belonged to only me, then he had belonged to Hoss and I, and back then he belonged to Marie, Hoss, and Little Joe."

"But not you?"

"My father had finally realized his dream," Adam said. "He had his Ponderosa; although, it was much smaller back then. We had things we hadn't before: a home and a community of folks in Virginia City, people we would come to call neighbors and friends. We lived on our land and built that house. Over time, both things grew. Pa acquired more land and added on to the house; he began to experience more successes than failures. He married Marie and along came Joe, and somewhere along the line, something between Pa and I changed. He didn't feel like he was mine anymore. It didn't seem like the life he was building had a place for me. Not with the way I was acting, at least. I wanted to talk to him; I wanted to tell him how I felt. How overwhelming the life we had found sometimes felt, how much I yearned for our nights beneath the stars, the excitement of a trail, and the almost endless promise of better things to come. How scary it all was having a new mother and a new brother in such a short amount of time. I never could get the words to come out right, and Pa never was good at listening to the things he didn't want to hear. Even if I had been able to talk to him, I don't know that I could have explained myself. I couldn't begin to understand why I felt the way I did. So, I took my frustration out on Marie. Pa, he thought I was being difficult because I had loved Inger too much to allow someone else to take her place, and for a long time I thought that too, but now I know that wasn't the reason at all."

"Then what was?"

"I pushed Marie away because I knew something bad was going to happen. I knew that whatever good she brought to our lives was not destined to last. It's strange to think of all of this now; I haven't thought about it for such a long time. Before I took Peggy away from Will, Pa said I was a bad influence on her. He believed my past, the way I acted toward Marie, rendered me unable to help Peggy accept Will as her stepfather. Maybe he was right about that, I don't know, but I do know that the thing that my father thought made me a poor influence on that child back then, is the same thing that makes me such a good father to her now. I can weather whatever mood she finds herself in. I can look at her when she has fire in her eyes, when she's hating everything around her, including myself, and I can love her anyway. So, I suppose I was wrong about Marie, because even though she died a long time ago the good she brought into my life did last. It's stuck with me all these years. And that's why when Abraham said what he did about me having a mother, I didn't think of Elizabeth or Inger; I thought of Marie. Then I thought about Pa and what happened between us. And then I wondered how different that all would have been had Marie still been with us. If she would have still been able to do what Pa could not. If she would have loved me throughout the things that were destined to drive me away from that place and the home my father had built."

"She would have," Ed said knowingly. "She does. Elizabeth, Inger, and Marie, they all do."

Clearing his throat, Adam drank what was left of his whiskey, allowing the stiff liquid to dislodge the lump that had become stuck in his throat.

"Boy, I do believe you're getting sentimental in your old age," Ed said. "Or is it just your approaching birthday that's making you a bit soppy?"

Adam extended a good-natured index finger. "Hey, man, I may be a lot of things, but I am never soppy."

"Well, I won't disagree with that." Ed cast a thoughtful gaze at the worn batwing doors connecting the saloon to whatever dreamscape lay outside. Looking back at Adam, his eyes shone with an enigmatic glint. "What do you think you'll do?"

"When?"

"When you find Wallace Merrill and cross his name off of Weston's list?"

Reaching for the bottle of whiskey, Adam refilled their glasses and then held the bottle in between both of his hands. The glass was cool against his palms; the brown liquid inside sloshed lazily against the sides of the bottle. "Turn in my badge, I guess," he said finally, his tone of voice decidedly resigned rather than resolute. "Hope that this time they'll actually take it."

"And what are you going to do if they don't?"

Shrugging, Adam refused to think about such a thing. It was a situation he would deal with when and if it arose.

"Man, that is the real challenge, isn't it," Ed mused. "It isn't the chasing that's hard; it's thinking about what's going to happen when it's all over. This chase, this hunt for Wallace Merrill is one of those situations. You're so close to the end of everything; it kinda makes you want to go back and restart from the beginning, do a few things differently than how you did. Maybe you wouldn't change anything with the family you left behind, but there are a few things you wish you could change about the family you found."

"You're talking about Eddie and me," Adam easily gleaned. It was, after all, one of his greatest regrets. "You're talking about the lie we started telling before Charlie was born."

The world saw Eddie and Adam as married, but they were not. He had always believed that someday he would take Eddie on a trip to someplace far away, where no one knew them and therefore would not look upon them unkindly when they commissioned a priest or a reverend and finally traded wedding vows. Until that happened—and even after—they would both worry about their lie being detected, scandalizing their children, crippling their futures in certain circles, and denying them entry into others. The world could not know Charlie and Noah had been born outside of wedlock. They could not know Peggy had not been formally adopted—that the person the law of any land would declare as her legal parent and guardian was neither Adam, nor Eddie, nor even Lil.

"I'm talking about a lot of things," Ed said. "I worry about you, you know. Probably in the same way you worried about me when I was alive. You're not an unsure man, Adam. Do you ever stop to wonder why you have doubts about the things you should be most certain of? It's because your doubts aren't just doubts. It's fate reaching out to you, telling you what to do and where to go. Five years ago, fate guided you to take Peggy away from your cousin, a choice that led you away from your father and brothers and toward the woman you love. Later, you thought it was doubt that led you away from Eddie, Peggy, and your future in San Francisco. It wasn't. It was fate, because you were meant to find a different path, my friend. You were meant for a different life and other things. In Will's company you found those things."

"I found trouble in Will's company," Adam corrected.

"Just at first. Then you found something else. That badge and the purpose it gave you. Fate guided you toward that then, and she's guiding you now. There are all sorts of things governing a man's choices and behavior if only he'd summon the courage to see them. There are countless roads a man can travel if only he can find them. Some are straight, others are winding, and some have forks. When you come upon the latter, be careful you choose the right direction. There's always a right and wrong one, and usually you don't know you've made a wrong turn until you've gone too far."

"What do you mean?"

"Your line of work is dangerous; your gal, she knows that, and that's why she wants you home. You know that too, and that's why you left San Francisco even after she asked you to stay. That's why you want to remain as far from there as you can get. It isn't just about the road, or the job anymore. You have a compulsion to complete Weston's list that transcends mere responsibility to the man who gave you the opportunity to become what you are. You know that, somewhere deep inside of you, you do. Five years ago, you didn't want to go home, and you don't want to return home now. They were two different places back then, but the doubt facilitating your hesitance is the same. It all comes back to you, Adam. You're torn between the kind of man you know you are and the one you think you oughta be. That's fate leading you to feel that way, because you were chosen to travel this road you're on for a reason."

"Chosen for what?"

"Sorry, old friend, I can tell you a lot, but some things you will have to find out on your own. Trust yourself. You are very intuitive. If you have a gut-feeling about something, you're always right. You're not an unsure man. If doubt creeps up on you, there's always a damn good reason." Reaching across the bar top, Ed clenched Adam's forearm tightly, his expression becoming grim. "Don't rush back to San Francisco," he implored. "You hold onto your doubt about the life waiting for you there. Take your time finding Wallace Merrill. Don't track him down and bring him in too soon. You travel the path you're on alone. Don't take anyone down it with you, no matter how bad things get, no matter how much you may find yourself wanting to. You stand and take the road you're traveling alone."

"Ed?"

"Because the thing about one road is it usually leads you to a second," Ed continued, impervious to the interjection. "You just have to know how to find it and the right time to take it. The moments in life, the ones where you do things without really knowing why, they happen all the time. There's always a reason for the things you do. Even if you don't want to see them, they're always there. You never go into anything completely blind; some men do, but you're not one of them. You're not blind now, even if you don't want to understand where your hesitation is coming from. Think about your doubt, examine it, figure out where it's coming from and why. Be honest with yourself about the things you can and can't do. Like Abraham said, you're a man who takes responsibility for righting other people's wrongs. You don't want to, but you have to. Fate, she led you before, and she's leading you now. You don't know that yet, but, in time, you will."

"Ed?" Adam repeated, a knot gathering in the pit of his stomach, leaving him feeling laden with sudden dread. "What—?"

"You should head north," Ed said. "Then make your way a little further east. Take a day or two off the trail. Hell, take a week and really enjoy yourself. New England is awfully pretty this time of year. Don't you think it's about time you saw it again? You're so close, and there's no telling if or when you'll find yourself headed in this direction again. Go there, Adam, and maybe, just maybe, you'll discover some things about yourself you don't already know."

Squeezing Adam's forearm tightly, Ed shook it, an abrupt and violent motion.

Adam woke suddenly. Lying flat on his back, he heard a wolf howling in the distance as he looked up at a star speckled sky. Mind racing and stomach turning, his face contorted with confusion as two words left his mouth in a nearly inaudible whisper:

"New England?"

TBC