Chapter 10

The ride back to the homestead in the wagon was a quiet one. Sully had expected the babies to fall asleep, but they had remained awake and intense, as though the situation between their parents kept them from feeling safe enough to close their eyes. Michaela, though, had fallen asleep. It wasn't a sleep that was restful or comforting to Sully though, as she fidgeted and moaned in the seat next to him. This made him worried that she would loosen her grip on their son and daughter, and so he spent the entire drive to the house with an arm around her and the babies as a precaution. He knew that if she found out that he had cuddled her close, even for practical reasons, after the argument they had just had, she would have accused him of thinking that she could be easily assuaged by intimacy and that he truly did think she was a whore. He wasn't sure if he could handle hearing that word from her lips again. He didn't even know how to handle her bringing the topic up in the first place. It seemed so unlike her, and yet she truly believed it, if her tone when she said it was to be believed.

As he held her close, he looked at the miracles that had transformed their last twenty hours together. Both children were so beautiful. Charlotte had her mother's coloring, down to even a fine layer of auburn hair on the top of her head. Her skin was also as pale as Michaela's and she looked like a porcelain doll, Sully thought. She looked so much like her ma, but he could see himself in her as well. At this realization, he instinctively held his wife closer and dared to kiss the top of her head, but not wanting to risk any more intimate contact, he decided to gaze at his son out of the corner of his eye as well. Josef's looks more closely resembled Sully's. He had his father's sandy colored hair and slightly darker skin tone. He also had striking blue eyes that seemed to stare back into Sully's own half-tuned eye with an intensity and a seriousness that made Sully feel instantly guilty for the way things were with Michaela. His son seemed to be telling him just how stupid and cruel he'd been, "Not unlike what my other sons are going to be saying to me when we reach the house, if they are speaking to me that is." Sully mused wearily.


The wagon arrived at the homestead just after dusk. At the sound of the horses, the children including Matthew, Colleen, and Andrew, rushed out onto the porch, expecting to see their very pregnant mother exhaustedly driving a wagon, which along with its owner had been missing for almost two days. Instead, what they saw stopped them in their tracks. Even Katie was too stunned to move. Amid their silence the group first took in their sleeping mother or mother-in-law, their new siblings, and finally and most unbelievably, their father or father-in-law. None of the group could believe the scene laid out before them.

Michaela had obviously gone into labor in the woods and along with his jumbled emotions, Brian had to chuckle that his ma had a habit of giving birth in the woods away from the homestead. He thought for a moment that perhaps she did this subconsciously to spare them the worry of having to watch her have the babies and to make sure that his pa could be there with her. His pa. Now that was another issue. His pa seemed to be holding his ma like there was nothing wrong, and yet the look on his father's face said that he was afraid of being caught, as though his mother had not sanctioned or had expressly forbid the embrace. He felt caught too. He didn't know whether to be angry for the six months his father had been gone or to cling to him for dear life like a small child so that the only pa he had ever known wouldn't leave, like Ethan had, and wouldn't destroy the woman he had come to think of as his true mother, the only one he could really remember with any non-childlike certainty. His emotions were in such a jumble that he dared not be the first one to speak, mostly because he didn't know whether he would cry or yell and didn't feel comfortable doing either at 18 years of age, even if the reason for his tears and anger was his pa.

Colleen didn't know if she was seeing things and instinctively she leaned into Andrew's arms as though to shield herself from a giant, vicious creature, which seemed to threaten her heart and soul. Andrew seemed to sense her state of mind and closed his arms tightly around his wife, forming a protective barrier against the emotional uncertainty that had become an overwhelming presence in the moment. Colleen didn't know what to say or do: there was her pa, her ma, and her new brothers or sisters, and yet all she felt as though she could do was to run away. All she wanted to do was escape the fear, emptiness, and pain that had been the impetus for this moment and their family's constant shadow for six months. Her ma had been so destroyed by what her pa had done that she doubted very seriously that the embrace her pa now held her ma in was a sanctioned one. It seemed desperate and her ma seemed to be moaning softly in her sleep, whether from pain of delivery or from pain of her husband's reappearance, Colleen didn't know. She guessed that the most accurate assessment would be that the moans were symbolic of the pain of both situations and that worried Colleen more than anything.

For her own part, Colleen didn't know how to approach her father. He had abandoned them just like Ethan had, even though Michaela had loved Sully and Sully had loved Michaela far more than Charlotte had ever loved Ethan, and visa versa. The possible disillusion of such a powerful bond made Colleen wonder if the only pa she had ever truly had would stop loving her too. Though she knew the loss of love was a childish concern, she couldn't shake it, and so she remained silent, hoping that by doing so, she wouldn't say anything that would guarantee a fatherless future.

Matthew, on the other hand, was boiling with anger. He had no qualms about telling Sully what he thought of him. He was as low as Ethan, even lower since his ma loves him more than anything in the world. Nothing Matthew could do while Sully was gone was enough to ease his mother's pain. He would hug her, kiss her forehead, tell her that they would all take care of her, much as he had done when Sully had been in hiding, but this time it wasn't enough. His ma, the person who had taken care of him when his first mother had died and who had raised him to be a responsible man and not just a man for the sake of being one, had been abandoned by the love of her life and his brothers and sisters had been abandoned by the only pa who had ever been there for them. The pain of the moment for them was too much for Matthew to take and this accounted for much of the young man's anger; however, if the truth be known, Matthew had recently been closer to considering Sully a pa than ever before and he realized that a great deal of his anger stemmed from his own abandonment by the man he truly did consider his father. He had never told Sully the depth of his parental affections for him because it embarrassed Matthew and made him feel vulnerable, but the emotions were there and the hurt was just as real as it had been when Ethan disappeared. Perhaps even more so, since Sully had always been there, even while in hiding and at that time, Matthew had given up everything to restore his family and to regain the man who led their family and kept them safe and loved. His pa had lefr them. HIS PA. He couldn't get over the hurt. He didn't know what to do with it. He was tired of being the one who held it together for everyone's sake. His pa had abandoned them. His pa had abandoned him, and even though he was 27 years-old, he couldn't hold his temper in check. "Sully!" he shouted, startling everyone out of their revelries, waking his mother and startling the babies so that all were frightened and the youngest members of the family were crying. "How dare you show your face here. How dare you even touch Ma."

Matthew's utterance caused Michaela to realize that Sully's arm was around her. Being careful not to drop her son and daughter, she quickly scurried out of the unwanted embrace, positioning herself on the very edge of the wagon seat and grabbing Sully's arm and yanking it from behind her, shoving it in his lap as though he had touched her far more inappropriately than he had. Yet Sully understood that the way things were now; it was almost as if he had groped her in public. He immediately felt remorseful for not removing his arm as soon as it had become unnecessary and his son's anger cut him to the very core. He had guessed that the children would be furious, but Matthew's shouts had bordered on hatred and he knew there was more to come.

As if in response to Sully's musings, Matthew continued, "Get outta here! You don't deserve us and you certainly don't deserve Ma. You are a selfish man and you've used this family to get some kind of fantasy played out before you. You can have the wife and kids when you want, but you can go traipsin' off when you want to and we'll all just sit here pinin' for ya until you come back, right? Well we're done pinin' and you're done being a pa. Ma can decide whether you're done being a husband, but if she'll allow me, I'm gonna take Katie and Brian, and they're gonna stay with me until you've figured out where the hell you're gonna live, 'cuz if it's up to me, you sure ain't gonna live where you can hurt this family any more. I don't want Katie to have to be affected by listening to her ma cry all the time. We've all heard it enough to break our own hearts and maybe it's time that you heard it alone in the house, the house that you actually had the nerve to say that you built outta love for a family you just stop loving whenever you feel like it." With that, Matthew roughly grabbed Brian's hand as though he was a young child and swooped Katie up into his arms, making his way quickly to the wagon that he had brought along with him on his visit to the homestead last night after he had searched for his mother for the whole of the afternoon.


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