Chapter 3

Sully stood at the bank of a stream deep in the Colorado woods. He didn't know where he was exactly, the only thing he knew was that he was still in Colorado, and that he was still away from Michaela. It had been four months since he left the homestead; four months of pure agony. He could still remember as clearly as if it were yesterday his actions once he had closed the door on his entire life. He had gathered his horse, threw the saddle over his mount, and placed his travel pouch on the horn of that saddle. Finishing this task, he had turned back around to face the house, gazing at it through both the eyes of its builder and of a stranger to its meaning and purpose. Looking so intently at it, he realized how acutely appropriate those terms were to describe his situation. He allowed himself to shed one tear as he bid the house that he had created from love goodbye. He then climbed on his horse and made his way to town. He knew that Brian was still in school, and thus he knew he wouldn't be able to say goodbye to his son the way he had to his daughter. Matthew was out of town on legal business, and would never know that the man whom he was beginning to consider his father was gone. Colleen and Andrew too were out of town. They were belatedly celebrating their anniversary and taking advantage of a late May heat wave which seemed to make the Colorado landscape just warm enough to keep people healthy, and just cool enough to avoid causing Colorado's citizens to suffer from heat stroke, and other ailments consistent with unseasonably warm temperatures. With a pang Sully realized that the only one of his children that would know why he was gone was too young to explain what she had heard in a way that her siblings would understand and believe. The three older children would be shocked at his behavior, he knew that. He also feared that they would feel betrayed, and ultimately resentful towards him, a possibility that caused him almost as much pain as his separation from Michaela had and would.

Sully snapped himself out of his memory with a violent shiver, caused more by the chilling of his soul at the recollection of his betrayal of his children than by the breeze that blew on this September day. Sully stood, desiring to relieve the cramps that had plagued his legs for the last hour as he sat in contemplation of his current and future life. He bent down at the stream's edge, and cupped his hands below the surface of its cool waters, slowly raising them, and drinking the cool water that filled his open palms. He partook of the water thirstily, fully aware that his thirst was not the kind that could be quenched by any liquid, it was a thirst for peace, for reconnection, and for the healing touch of the spirits, or perhaps more truthfully the touch of his children and his heartsong.

Finally growing tired of filling his empty soul through the satiation of his stomach with water, he turned to leave the stream and retreat back into the woods and the lean-to that he built upon arriving in this part of the woods four months ago. He did not turn quickly enough however, and he caught his reflection in the stream's clear surface. What he saw frightened him. His eyes were bloodshot form lack of sleep. His cheeks were puffy from months of heavy tears, and wrinkles caressed his chin and jaw bones in a way that made him look like an old man—a man who'd seen far too much, and lost too many to ever be happy again. At this realization he nodded his head, and recognized the reflection for what it was: a true picture of the person he'd now become.


Michaela stood in the master bedroom gazing into the full-length mirror. She first took in the mirror reflection of her face that stared back at her. After Katie's birth she had begun to look older—she knew it as surely as she knew that she was a doctor. She was older, and less beautiful—at least in her own mind—although Sully had never said so. Sully had said that she grew more beautiful with time. Sully always said…. She felt tears threaten to mar her already weathered cheeks once again. He had said that he didn't love her. Her one, true love—the man who taught her to trust and be vulnerable—had torn her heart to pieces with his statement shortly before he left their home. She would never love another; of that she was already certain. It wasn't that she was worried about trusting someone else, although she knew she would never be able to do that in quite the same way again, no, it was something more profound than that. As she looked into her own eyes in the mirror, she noticed that the glimmer they once held was gone and realized with resignation that she would never love again, because Sully had taken her soul with him when he had gone; and she knew without a second thought that she would never have it back. Just as he once said that his heart was hers, her heart was his, as was her very essence; and so she realized that it was no use looking at her own face in the mirror, because it was never going to be whole again. Without the magic in her eyes, born of her love for Sully, her reflection would be forever altered, and broken.

Resigning herself to this, she moved to survey the rest of her changing figure. Her eyes traveled to her distended abdomen. Absentmindedly she caressed the mound which had begun to appear just days after Sully's departure. She had known that her nausea and lightheadedness meant something, but she never dreamed, not even in the farthest reaches of her imagination, that she was pregnant; and still she struggled with the reality of it all. She couldn't understand, couldn't even fathom why God would give her and Sully a baby at such a volatile and painful time in their relationship. Relationship…she wondered again, as she had every minute of every day since he had slammed the door to the homestead whether they ever really had one, or whether all that she remembered was a dream, a dream turned nightmare. Now, she also wondered for what also seemed like the millionth time whether this baby would have any relationship with its father. The thought brought tears to her eyes again, and she struggled to squash it so that another morning would not be spent sobbing in front of the mirror. She knew that her pain was not good for her child; and even though by some miracle she had made it passed the typical period within which a woman miscarries, she worried almost every day about the possibility that she would lose this baby, and thus lose any chance of another connection to Sully besides Katie.

'Katie," she sighed. Her beautiful little girl wasn't speaking to her. About a half an hour after Sully left the homestead, Michaela had awoken on the living room floor. She had woken not by her own volition, for were it her choice she would have remained in oblivion forever so as to escape the loss of the person she loved most in the world, but Katie had had other ideas. Before Michaela could fully rouse herself out of the faint which had caused her position, she felt Katie's punches hitting her in the cheeks and chest. The punches weren't hard, but they had hurt, mostly because the little girl she loved with all of her being was inflicting them.

"I hate you, Mama!" Katie was saying, over and over, her voice filled with anger. "I hate you so much! I'll never forgive you!" Katie's tone remained strident, even though she was sobbing more intensely than Michaela had ever seen her do before.

Thinking back on it now, her daughter's words were every bit the sentiments of the little girl's own father, and Michaela couldn't help but cringe as she listened to them, remembering that Sully had essentially said the same thing to her before she had taken leave of her senses.

"Katie…" she had cried, hoping to curb the child's tirade.

"I'm not your Katie!" the little girl had shouted through her tears. "I'm not your little girl! You're not my Mama! Not anymore! Papa left forever 'cuz of you,and he's never comin' back! I hate you."

Stunned at the harshness of Katie's words, Michaela recalled that it had taken her a moment before she was able to speak.

"Katie, Honey, Mama loves you. Come here, Sweetheart. I know you heard some very loud yelling, and I know Papa's gone…but he'll be back…to see you. And I love you so very much, Dear. It will be alright." Michaela recalled that Katie had pondered her words for a moment before replying.

"You did this Mama. You're mean. Papa went away 'cuz you're mean. And he doesn't love you or me 'cuz you yelled. I'm gonna tell Brian to take me away. I'll find Papa. And I'll go live with him, and help the Indians, and never come back, and never come home."

Katie's hatred had made Michaela sob openly in front of her daughter; but Katie hadn't reacted. The little girl blamed her for everything, and she knew without thinking that Sully had not told Katie how to feel or even what happened. Katie's anger now was based solely on what she had heard and understood. The little girl had passed her own judgment, and sentenced Michaela to be forever banished from her heart. At the time Michaela had consoled herself with the knowledge that six-year-olds were apt to hate something one minute, and love it with all their heart the next; she had thought that this would mean Katie would forgive her by the end of the week.

As the weeks dragged on, though, Michaela began to realize that the little girl was holding steadfast to her convictions and her assessment of blame—a sense of blame Michaela couldn't even shake form her own heart. She'd lost her husband and her daughter, and her reflection save her protruding stomach showed her to be as alone as she felt. In fact, as she traced her finger along her form in the mirror she noticed off to the side of it a large crack in the clear glass, a crack that had always been hidden by Sully's reflection in the mirror. She suspected that if she had looked close enough, she might have been able to find it even when he had stood beside her; but because Sully had been standing by her, her eyes and heart had been focused on him. The mirror had not mattered. Now all she wished was that he was standing by her, once more, covering up the fracture in the glass, and the crevice in her life.


Please review and let me know if the storyline and characters are behaving in interesting and yet valid ways consistant with the character and development of the story and show.

Thanks, Corinna