NOW:

Adam and Ben arrived at the Running D to find it appearing as abandoned as it had ever been.

Standing next to the hitching post, Ben watched Adam walk past the derelict corral, through the thick weeds and wild grass as he stalked around the perimeter of the barn and then the house. Both buildings were still boarded, their entry points seemingly inaccessible. Ben was hard pressed to understand how Peggy had entered the home, let alone seen someone inside of it.

Maybe she had imagined it, he thought, both being inside of the house and whoever it was that she saw. Maybe being in the company of Jamie while setting foot on the property, a fellow teenager rather than an adult—whose presence was not quite as protective and foreboding as it needed to be—had allowed the demons and ghosts of the past to rise and overwhelm her, leaving her disheveled, angry, and confused. It was as logical a conclusion as any, and one which Adam did not seem willing to glean.

Making his way to the front door of the house, Adam began pulling off the boards securing the threshold. Ben watched his son's actions from afar, wondering what he was thinking, or expecting to find, and if either of them would be able to accept whatever it was: someone, something, or nothing at all. He thought of the last time he had been here, the phantom footsteps he had heard inside of the house. Ben wondered what Peggy had told Adam she had seen or heard, and why his son was so eager to see this elusive thing. Jamie had said Peggy had screamed in fear when she saw it; Ben wondered what Adam would do if he laid eyes on it, too.

Pulling the last board off the doorway, Adam tossed it aside and clutched the doorknob; finding it unwilling to be turned, he let it go, and then steadied himself, shifted his weight and slammed his shoulder against the door. Its weathered wood gave out in a series of resounding snaps, the wreckage falling to the ground to allow entry to the tenebrous confines. Fingering his gun in its holster, Adam seemed hesitant to enter. To Ben, it seemed like the first slight indication that something was wrong.

Looking over his shoulder, Adam cast him a careful look. "Stay here," he instructed.

Staring at the darkness beyond the front door, Ben was reminded of how much he did not like the house. The people who had once occupied it. Or the events that had taken place inside. Shaking his head, he was determined not to think of any of that—not at this moment, at least. Recalling the past would not help him negotiate the present, and besides it was Adam who he was trying to help now, not Laura—or Will.

It was difficult not to think of Will, especially in a moment like this. Like Frank Dayton before him, Will's name had become synonymous with the Running D. One could hardly think about the property without thinking of the man who had owned it last, the one who had done everything he could to destroy all that he had been entrusted to keep healthy and safe.

Staring at his son's back, Ben noticed Adam had yet to move from where he stood just outside the threshold of the home, lingering in the light instead of taking his first step into abject darkness. He wondered what was facilitating his son's hesitance; if they were thinking of the same things.

"It's very dark in there," Ben said, not really understanding why. Did he mean to discourage Adam from entering? Did he really think such an observation would be enough to do such a thing? A strange feeling was overwhelming him, an inexplicable need to grab Adam by the arm, pull him away from the house, and run.

Something was very wrong here. He could feel that somehow. Whatever lurked inside of this place was not meant to be seen.

But Peggy had seen it, whatever it was.

Oh, no, he thought. Don't you dare start acting and thinking foolish now, letting a silly little bad feeling dictate—

"I don't want to go in there," Adam said. Quiet and bitter, the statement gave voice to Ben's anxieties, drawing further attention to them and superseding the glaring oddness of the admission.

"Then don't," Ben said. The response sounded a little too simple, and it was.

"I have to."

"Why?"

Turning, Adam cast him a resigned look. "Because I'm me," he said. "I'm Adam, the one who stands tall in the face of adversity; the one expected to do the difficult thing when no one else can summon the strength to. I'm not supposed to be afraid of anything."

But he was.

Maybe it was the energy of the house and the memories it awoke, or maybe it was something else completely that was allowing Ben to see clearly what could have been so easily missed. Adam was afraid. Had he always been that way? Ben wondered. Had his courage and determination always been forced to mask his underlying fear and doubt? Suddenly, Ben was not looking at Adam as he was, burly, tall, and capable at over four decades old. He was looking at his little boy. His very little boy, his hazel eyes wide and full of tears, a deep dark bruise blemishing his still almost-baby soft skin, his voice shaking as he spoke in a painfully quiet tone: Papa, I missed you. Where did you go, Papa?

Even back then Ben had failed to answer the question. How could he? He had failed to protect his son when it mattered the most.

"It's alright, Adam," Ben said, the words escaping his mouth without thought. He did not know which one of them he was trying to soothe, his grown son, the little boy who had ceased existing too long ago, or himself. "Whatever is inside of this place, or the difficult things it awakens, we'll face them together. I'll do for you now what I should have done back then."

"Which is what?" Adam's voice was soft, his expression suddenly curious. "What exactly do you intend to do?"

Grasping Adam's arm, Ben guided him a few paces backward. "Let me stand in front of you for a change," he said as he did just that.

"And then?"

And then, Ben thought, well, and then we go in. He stared at the darkness inside of the house, the same blackness in which Peggy had said she had seen something and that stunned his valorous eldest son into agonizing inactivity. Logically, he knew there was no reason to fear what was inside. Incomprehensibly, he knew that there was. Adam was afraid, and so was he.

He stood there for what felt like the longest time, his heartbeat thudding in his ears as he quietly listened and silently questioned what he should do. Maybe if it was not so dark, he would feel better about entering. Maybe if Adam had not hesitated, he would have followed him inside without giving credence to his overwhelming unease.

Something deep inside of him was demanding he leave, because something was terribly wrong. It had nothing to do with him now, but it would not remain that way if he stayed where he was.

Either growing tired of his father's reluctance or his own, Adam took a deep breath, fingered his gun, and pushed his father aside. "Stay here," he instructed again. "If you follow me you're liable to get shot, and that's the last thing I need to deal with right now."

"Me shot?"

"No, me shooting you. Badge or no, with the way folks feel about me around here, I do something like that and I'm bound to get hung."

And with that Adam was gone, swallowed up by the darkness of the house.

Ben wanted to follow but found he simply could not. His feet had stopped taking orders from his brain, it seemed; his body's visceral reaction to the house had rendered him incapable of taking a step forward or back. He stood alone, rooted to the chipped and cracking boards lining the porch for what felt like hours, waiting for Adam to reemerge, listening for his son's footsteps, evidence that he was investigating room after room. He heard nothing, which was within itself painfully odd. The house was not overly large; unoccupied for years, its insides should have become somewhat hollow, the walls reverberating the sounds of someone walking across the floorboards.

"It's a strange house," Adam had once said. "If you said you heard something, I'd believe you. You wouldn't be the first to hear things."

But, standing outside of it now, Ben heard nothing that would verify the presence of anyone, not even his son who he knew was inside.

The sun began to slightly slip in the horizon, the afternoon air suddenly feeling impossibly cold and incredibly thick, a maddening contradiction that only added to his unease. How much time had passed since Adam entered the house? How much longer would it be until he came back out? And why on earth did Ben himself feel as though he could not move? What was it that was rooting him in place, making following Adam impossible? What was it about this place that felt so innately wrong?

Was it the sinister nature of what had once happened here? Had the memories of Will Cartwright's savage hand coupled with the violence of how Laura Dayton died given birth to a vicious energy, leaving the property condemned to be viewed as ominous, menacing, and macabre? Ben neither believed in haunted houses, nor did he give much credence to the existence of ghosts, but even he could not deny something was at work here. Maybe it was the overpowering memories of a time when he had so comprehensively failed that were lending to his trepidation. Maybe it was all the things he still did not know about his son that were paralyzing him in place. Laura Dayton had died inside of this house; Adam had found her; and now he harbored an illicit photograph of a woman whose death mirrored that of his former fiancée. Adam was not a murderer—Ben knew that—but what kind of man did the things he did? And what memories or emotions had nearly rendered him incapable of entering the house?

Finally, Adam appeared, emerging from the darkness to stand next to where his father had become frozen. "There's no one in there," he said flatly.

"Who did Peggy say she saw?"

Eyeing the darkened confines of which he had just emerged, Adam tilted his head and scoffed in an uneasy manner.

"Who did you think she saw?" Ben tried again.

Adam did not answer. His avoidance sat on Ben's heart and mind for the remainder of the day, until he had no choice but to repeat the question.

Sitting on the opposite side of a campfire, he watched the flames dance, casting shifting light upon his eldest son's rigid expression. Much to Ben's disappointment, Adam had decided not to proceed to the Ponderosa to put Peggy's worries at ease; instead, they had set up their nightly camp at the Running D. Why Adam had decided to remain on a property that unnerved them both, Ben did not know.

With the derelict house and outbuildings standing tall in the distance, it was difficult to ignore the events of the day, or Adam's unwillingness to return to his distraught daughter's side. As a father, Ben thought he understood Adam's reasoning for prolonging such a thing. Peggy was safe in the company of the group who inhabited the Ponderosa; her lingering anger and fear would ground her in place better than any direct instruction would. However, as Adam's father, he did not understand his son's reasoning at all. By remaining out here, whose fear was Adam hesitant to face: his daughter's or his own? After all, he had been afraid, too. Afraid of what Peggy had seen when he rushed out of town and to the Running D. Afraid to enter the decrepit farmhouse that now stood so forebodingly in the distance. And, judging by his earlier confession, he was afraid of Peggy discovering the truth about an elusive event or decision that would drive a wedge between them, creating a cavernous distance that could never be spanned.

Recalling Peggy's earlier words, Ben wondered if this afternoon was the beginning of what Adam was likely to fear the most, the end of the girl's youthful and innocent interpretation of the man she had claimed as her pa. Peggy had said she hated Adam. She had accused him of keeping something secret. She had said she had seen someone in the house. Someone Jamie had said she was both angry and terrified to see.

"Who was it, Adam?" Ben asked, the question leaving his mouth almost inexplicably. "Who was it Peggy said she saw?"

If Adam was surprised by the question, he gave no indication. "Nobody," he said.

"Why did you hesitate to enter the house?"

"Why did you?" Adam countered.

Ben thought on the question. "It bothers me," he said finally.

Adam regarded the fire between them thoughtfully, his eyes flickering against the light of the flames. "It bothers me too," he said, then was quiet for a time. "The last two occasions I stepped into that house my whole life changed," he added. "The first was when I found Laura's body and the second was when I took Peggy away. One of those decisions changed things for the better, the other for the worse. It's been so long now since either of those days that sometimes I wonder which was which. If I would not have found Laura then I would not have ended up taking Peggy, without Peggy I wouldn't have found Eddie, and without Eddie I wouldn't have had Noah or…" He closed his mouth, seemingly intent on not speaking further.

Although he did not say Charlie's name aloud that did not keep Ben from knowing it had teetered on the edge of his tongue; it did not keep the flash of very real pain that was etched on his face for the briefest of moments, or the flicker of grief that remained in his hazel eyes.

"Charlie," Ben finished softly. "You would not have had your time with Charlie, as brief as it was."

He considered Adam, watching, and waiting for a reaction. It was the first time he dared to voice the name of his deceased grandson, sharing with Adam his knowledge of the boy's existence—as slight as it was. Gaze frozen on the fire, Adam neither responded nor did the sadness in his eyes wane. Ben deemed it appropriate to continue. "And you would not have the gift of the child who has yet to arrive."

That statement, it seemed, had been interpreted as a step too far. "You don't know everything," Adam said coolly. "I would appreciate it if you stopped acting as though you do. Enough talk about what I should be grateful for. You can't begin to understand anything about my family or life."

Ben would not be deterred. "And why is that?" he gently asked.

"Because we're fundamentally different people. Maybe we weren't before, but we are now."

"What do you believe makes us so different?"

"Our jobs for one."

"And?"

"Our pasts."

"There was a time when our past was one in the same. All those years we worked to make the Ponderosa what it is, the journey we shared to get here, the sacrifices and decisions we both made."

"And the ones you made for both of us. The span of time you left me behind in Ohio with John."

Ben cast Adam a careful look. For a man who once said he did not want to discuss the event, Adam's tone seemed to indicate the opposite. "I thought you said it was not Ohio that you held against me," he said carefully. "It was only ten days, son. A very small amount of time when compared to the rest of your life."

"Yeah, well, at that age it felt longer, especially given the volatility of the circumstances."

"Do you have something you would like to tell me about that time?"

Adam shook his head.

"Is there something about that time you would like me to tell you?" Ben asked.

Shifting his attention back to the fire, Adam did not immediately respond. "I understand why you left," he said. "What I can't seem to comprehend is why you came back."

"Why do you think I left you?"

Adam shrugged as though the answer was obvious. "Money," he said. "Time. Little kids need things that a vagabond lifestyle doesn't usually provide. I assume you were broke, like so many other occasions. You were overwhelmed by circumstance, the pressure and danger of the life you chose for us."

"You assume. But you don't know for certain?"

"I don't know anything for certain. The older I get, the more life I live, I come to understand that the only certain thing in a man's life is not being certain about anything."

That, Ben thought, sounded like an apt, cruel truth, and since his son had shared one with him, he decided to return the favor. "You're right. The reason I left you had a great deal to do with money, but it had to do with something else, too."

"What's that?"

"Fear. Hours after your mother died, Adam, I held you in my arms and promised to protect you from everything; I promised to love you unconditionally; and I vowed to shape you into a better man than I had the potential to be. Heading west, I took you away from the safety of your grandfather's house too soon, and I let go of Mrs. Callahan before I should have. We were traveling with a wagon train at the time; there were other people, other women who could mind you when I could not. It was foolish of me to think that it would always be that way. I don't have to tell you that it wasn't. People move on, families quit the trail, scatter into different directions, or find homes in towns along the way. We didn't stick with that wagon train for more than four months after Mrs. Callahan returned east. Everything became so much more difficult than I could have anticipated. We were alone. You needed so much, and every day that passed it became more evident that I could give you so little. When we reached Ohio, you were sick; I was tired; and our money had run out. When we arrived, I had no intention of leaving you, but after speaking at length with John and watching the kinship between you and Will grow, I began to change my mind."

"Will and I were close."

"You were beyond close. The two of you ran around thick as thieves. People used to think the two of you were brothers." Ben hesitated, the details of Will's letter to Adam silently assaulting him. To my brother, Will had written, not as a child but as an adult. "I'm surprised you don't remember that," he added, only slightly fishing for more information as to why Will would do such a thing.

Staring at him indifferently, Adam did not say a word. Ben thought it was just as well, lest he distract from the purpose of their current conversation.

"You and Will were the best of friends," he continued. "John seemed to have firm control over himself and his household. The woman he had married seemed absent but warm. There was nothing about anything that took place during my time there that made me hesitant to leave you in their care."

"So, you did," Adam said flatly.

"Yes, I did. It was never intended as a permanent arrangement; I want you to understand that."

"Then what was it intended for?"

"To give us time. Time for you to be a little boy in an actual home. Time for me to cross a few territorial lines without you. It was easier to work my way through, traveling from town to town without a child to care for. I was going to get as far as I could, as quickly as I could, and when I reached my unknown final destination, I was going to send for you. I was going to bring you to the home that I had found. I wanted to save you from experiencing any more difficulty and hurt. I wanted to protect you better than I did. In the end, I was only gone for a little over a week." He looked at Adam earnestly. "It was the longest week of my life."

"I said I understood why you left," Adam said, refusing to acknowledge the sentiment. "Why did you abandon your plan and come back?"

"Because I came to realize something I hadn't before. Something I've spent nearly the last forty years of my life knowing but now understand I never took the time to share it with you. I should have shared it. When Will walked back into our lives I should have sat you down and had a long talk about the past and Ohio, and I should have told you the truth."

"Which is?"

"You are my child, my firstborn son. It was your presence in my life that gave me purpose. It was the things you needed from me and the things I wanted for you that drove me, propelling me ever forward. Without you, there was no traveling west. There would be no Ponderosa or the Ben Cartwright the folks around here know. It wasn't my father's instability and violence that shaped me into who I am. Adam, it was you. That week without you I was lost, and the last six years I have been, too. I know there was a time when you looked at me as your guiding light, a lighthouse standing strong in the darkest of nights, but I wasn't that for you near as much as you were for me. It was your presence that pushed me when I needed pushing. You kept me hardworking and honest."

"You had other children. It wasn't just me who inspired action and propelled you forward. You had other sons."

"All of whom I love deeply, none of which will ever be you. I was so young when I became your father; in so many ways you and I grew up together. You were everything to me; you were my world. There's something special about firstborn children, Adam; something about their very presence that fundamentally changes a man inside."

Adam seemed to think a great deal about his father's remarks. "I know," he said eventually. "Lord knows, I wish I didn't, but I do. We're not that different, never really have been, but the ways in which we are different are too glaring to ignore. With all your talk of how important I am to you, I hope you realize you are quite fortunate. During the years I spent away from you, I could have died so many times, but I didn't. Your oldest son is still alive. Mine is buried in a graveyard over two hundred miles away. He's not here, Pa, but I am, harboring all my secrets and telling all my lies, pretending to be the kind of man I never really was in the first place."

"Things will get better," Ben whispered, though he questioned the validity of the statement as he thought of the photograph he had seen, an image of the beautiful, gregarious little boy that he would never be allowed to meet. He felt old, heartbroken, and inept. He wanted to soothe his son; he wanted to comfort himself. He wanted to offer up the perfect words of wisdom that would chase away both their pain, but he could not, because, even after all this time, he still knew his son, and he knew the ways of boys and men. Tears were a boy's way of dealing with pain; fury was a man's way of running from it. Adam's wound was still too fresh and deep; he was too full of self-loathing and anger to allow himself to be truly comforted.

"Time will soothe the pain you feel," he added, despite this knowledge. "Someday you won't feel it so strongly anymore. Loss always hurts, you know that, but the sting of it does fade, I suppose you know that, too. I won't pretend I know how you feel, Adam. I've never lost a child. I've never had a wife who strayed from my side."

"Eddie didn't stray," Adam corrected harshly, his mood shifting swiftly. Ben was not sure if he should feel reprimanded or relieved. "She had every right to leave me how and when she did. If you think otherwise, then you best not. Whatever you want to think about her, just remember she's the woman I love."

"So, you do love her."

Adam's expression darkened. "Of course, I do. What would make you think otherwise?"

"I suppose with the way things are between the two of you, I assumed otherwise. The way you've been acting, it's easy to think something went wrong."

"Something did go wrong."

"Which was?" Ben knew he was crossing a line by asking so directly, but he simply could not stop. She said she blamed you for Charlie's death, he thought. Was that it or was there something more? Tell me, son, so you can get it off your chest. Tell me so that you don't have to be alone with it.

"Don't you know?" Adam countered, his voice becoming deep and dangerous, a clear warning for his father to back off. "You and Eddie spent time together. I'm sure whatever she told you in combination with what you heard from Lil and Peggy would have given you a pretty full picture by now."

"I didn't ask them to share what little they did. I think they all needed to talk about the things they did. I think you need to talk too, as much as I know you would prefer not to."

"Why?" Adam snorted bitterly. "So I can kneel at the Church of Pa, admit my shortcomings and be absolved of my sins? Well, I hate to disappoint you, but at this point in life my sins would be too much for you to handle. I'm not a child you can goad or bully into sharing things."

Ben looked at the distant outbuildings standing so forebodingly in the darkness surrounding them. "Why does Peggy keep coming back here, Adam?" he asked. "What is she seeking? And why are we here now? What are you waiting for?"

Standing abruptly, Adam brushed the dust off the seat of his pants, stalked away from the campfire, and disappeared into the night.

Ben sat in place knowing he had pushed too hard and gone too far. Gone were the days when Adam would push him back, using his own careful questions and terse statements to intensify their argument, bringing it to a point of explosion. Gone was the compromise and cathartic peace that would follow. Gone were the days when Adam sought advice from his father, trusting the wisdom of his age and differing point-of-view to provide perspective. Gone were a great many things.

When Adam finally returned to their makeshift camp, the only sounds that existed between them as they settled upon their respective bedrolls was the crackling of the campfire. Staring at the stars above them, Ben struggled to allow the mollifying sound to lull him to sleep. Fidgeting, Adam seemed to share in his father's struggles, rolling to lay on one side and then the other, before finally expelling as sigh and settling on his back.

"I am waiting for something," he admitted, his voice a whisper so soft that Ben briefly thought he had imagined it. "And she doesn't know it now, but it's the same thing Peggy is seeking by coming out to this place. Change is quickly approaching, she knows that, and I know it, too. Not because either of us want it to, mind you, but because hidden truths and time are cruel co-conspirators. The former always comes calling when the latter runs out, and the latter always runs out. Peggy knew that long before I ever did. After her father died and before Laura decided to share with her the truth, that little girl used to sit out here and count. One… two…three… four. At the time, I thought there was no end to how high of a number she could reach; it was a task that could go on indefinitely, for as long as Laura remained so afraid of telling her the truth. Now, I know that it wouldn't have, because that little girl already knew the truth. That's why she counted, marking the moments until her mother found the courage to tell her what they both already knew. Peggy knew the truth back then, and she knows it now. Only now I'm the one counting. One… two… three…four. I'm the one waiting for that girl to find the courage to say what we both already know."

Which is what? Ben wanted so badly to ask. He did not, however. Sucking his bottom lip in between his teeth, he bit it and resigned himself to remain silent for fear that any reply would cause Adam to cease speaking.

"You think she was better off with me because I took her away from here," Adam whispered, his voice thick with pain and regret. "But she wasn't. Will failed her, but I failed her the most. He's not half the monster I turned out to be. I have so much blood on my hands that I don't think they'll ever get clean. Sheriff Coffee knows that now, and it's only a matter of time before Peggy tells the truth. One…two…three…four. Pa, I'm counting the moments until that change comes, dreading it but needing it to happen so badly at the same time."

A coldness seeped into the pit of Ben's stomach; a chill slivered up his spine as a harrowing question Peggy had asked him weeks ago leapt to the forefront of his mind: Did you feel it? The precise moment when what you thought you would never lose began slipping from your grasp? She had been referring to the time before Adam had taken her away from Will and left, the awful time of inaction and indecision just after Adam's fall and Laura and Will's marriage as the life he had once known began to rapidly shift and change. When Peggy had asked the question, he had told her he had felt it, the beginning of trying to hold on to something that was destined to be taken away. At the time, he could not account for his response, but now he knew the admission had been truthful. He knew he had felt it before, because he felt it now.

The sound of a lone wolf howling resounded through the darkness, floating on the cold, night air. There was a ferocity to the sound, a desperation, too, as it drifted to his ears from the direction of the abandoned farmhouse. It reminded him of all the talk of wolves—especially a specific big, bad one who had a penchant for blowing houses down and destroying everything he touched.

"Don't you understand?" Adam had once asked. "It isn't Ohio that's wedged between us. It's what you did for Will. All these years, Pa, I wondered if you knew the truth, and now it's me who's lying to protect you."

Listening to the wolf howl, Ben knew—without the slightest hints of a doubt he knew—Adam neither killed Laura, nor the woman in the photograph. He never asked for his life to become as painful, tumultuous, and difficult as it was. But his life was always destined to be difficult and tumultuous, because, as he himself had said, he was Adam. He was the one who stood tall and firm and did difficult things when no one else could find the strength to. The one who always did the right thing and advocated for whoever was in need. Whether a man was good or bad, up until a point, it did not seem to matter much, because Adam was not supposed to be afraid of anything.

But he was.

Adam was afraid because at his age he had kept secrets and told lies. He had experienced his moments of misplaced loyalty. He had once wanted to be different than his father, but he was not, because he was hiding something. Something he feared. Something that would force him to keep his family as far away from as he could get them. Something that would ruin his relationship with Peggy. Something that Roy Coffee knew required a badge to protect.

Overcome by despair, Ben found he could not speak. It was just as well. He did not need to ask who Adam was waiting for, or who Peggy had believed she had seen, because he knew. There was only one person whose presence could be perceived as a threat, warranting this much worry or strife. There was only one person who could destroy everything they held dear.

It was Will.

Peggy had seen Will at the Running D.

TBC