The door stood fixed and taunting on the front of the jailhouse. Looking between it and his son, Ben was rendered unable to decide what to do. Had the door been left behind to trick or help him? Did Adam have the power to save himself and his family from their harrowing fates? If so, why wasn't he doing anything about it? Why for the love of all that was holy and right wouldn't he say anything?

Adam remained at the trailhead. Back turned, his shoulders slightly slumped, he showed no indication that he would ever step away from it.

Looking at the door, Ben wondered how he would summon the desire to move away from where he currently stood, gazing upon a doorway of possibilities, alluring and endless, the moments contained inside of it seemingly the perfect solution to all current problems. He did walk away from it eventually, however, his long purposeful steps bringing him to his son's side to stare at the grievous road. Unlike the opposite side of the thoroughfare, there was no visible blockade preventing them from descending it. There was nothing outside of the obvious—a lack of horses and supplies—that would have deterred them from embarking on their escape. Despite the midwife's claims, Ben knew extraordinarily little was obvious about this place—or the road which seemed able to lead them away from it.

"You can't go down it," Adam said listlessly. "It looks like you should be able to, but you can't. You can put one foot in front of the other and walk for a little bit, and then something just stops you right in your tracks and leaves you with no other choice but to turn back around." He shuttered as he turned to look at the jailhouse. Then he looked at Ben, his eyes as vapid and pallid as his expression. "You aren't going to walk through that door?"

"I am not going to walk through that door," Ben affirmed. The intention had remained a mystery to even him until he said it aloud; even so, something about hearing and saying it felt incredibly right and good. One true thing among countless others that must be proven false.

If Adam wondered why Ben had decided to ignore the door, he did not ask. Oddly, he set his attention on tempting him instead. "If you don't go through it, then you'll never know what really happened."

"I will."

"No, you won't."

"Yes, I will."

Adam looked at Ben questioningly, his dull eyes flickering with a hint of something his father couldn't define.

"You're going to tell me," Ben explained.

"I won't. You can't fix this, Pa. Even if you could, I wouldn't want you to."

"You'd rather have your brothers die?"

Cringing, Adam shook his head ever so slightly, his resolve visibly shaken. Ben expected his son to respond in a voice laced with quick anger. He did not predict his son's fear. "No," Adam said, sounding as unsure of himself as he suddenly looked. "Don't do that."

"Do what?"

"Ask me questions you know I can't answer."

"Can't or won't?"

"Stop it."

"I can't stop it, son. Only you have the power to do that."

"I don't."

"You do."

"No, I don't."

"The midwife said you did. She said you could leave if you wanted to, that you know how to save us all."

"She lies."

"And you never do."

"No, I—!" Adam was shaking now, his ashen skin impossibly pale, glistening beneath a fresh layer of sweat. "I always try to tell the truth," he said weakly. "I'm not perfect, but I… I always try my best."

Pursing his lips, Ben nodded marginally and cast his sad gaze upon the trailhead. "Then why aren't you trying now?" he quietly asked.

Lord knew he didn't want to say it, to even allow the punishing statement to pass his lips, but he had to because he needed to know everything his son did, and he needed Adam to know that he expected to hear it. When Adam inhaled a thickened breath, he knew that his statement had hit its mark, that, despite current inhibitions and circumstances, his son could still fall captive to the pure terror accompanying the utterance of such things. Absently, he wondered if Adam would start crying again, what he himself would do if he did. He extended a steadying hand and gently palmed the back of his son's neck. He felt horrible—like a monster of a man and father—to dare utilize such a hidden fact, in a moment like this, no less. To give voice to this unmentionable thing which would only serve to shake Adam further as it drew covert attention to Ben's faults as a father to his first-born.

They both knew that somewhere along the way, Adam had begun to equate effort, confidence, and reliability with love. The worry was as untrue as it was old, as deep seeded as any other private pain Adam hid from the rest of the world, but like so many others, Ben knew it was there. He knew he had decided to place his trust and faith in his son too, a difficult thing to reconcile in the moment when everything felt so damn serious and important. When he was acutely aware that time was not a thing to be wasted. If Adam needed a push to highlight the importance of what he could say, then, taking a deep breath, Ben resigned himself to giving his son a great, big shove.

"If you don't tell me what happened," he began, hating every word he allowed to slip from his mouth as he shifted his tone and began speaking to his adult son as though he was issuing a final warning to a very disobedient child, "then I am going to walk through that door, and then I will see it anyway. This is your one and only chance to explain your side of the story."

"Do you really believe there is truth to be found behind that door?"

Ben had not expected the retort. "No," he said. Holding his son tightly, he clenched his free fist at his side and prayed for strength, for wisdom, for forgiveness for what he was about to say. "But I think you do."

"You're the one who's lying!" Adam exploded, pulling violently away as he proceeded to display an erratic and volatile change in disposition and emotion that he had not exhibited since his tumultuous teenage years. "You told yourself—you told her that you decided to trust me, but you don't at all!"

"You're the one who doesn't trust me, according to her."

"That's not true!"

"Then tell me what happened."

"I can't!"

"Tell me how we can fix it."

"I can't!"

"Yes, you can."

"No, I can't!" Adam declared. Though sunken, his eyes no longer appeared dull, a mixture of fury and hatred had chased any remnants of hollowness away. He was positively writhing with anger, his inhales coming in ferocious gasps, his exhales accompanied by deep, choking growls.

Ben had a fleeting notion that had Adam been a stranger—had he not been his beloved son—he might have feared him in this moment. He might have been afraid of the dangerous glint in his eyes, of his foreboding posture and dark expression, of his hands that were so swiftly raised to form tight fists around Ben's shirt lapels. But Adam was not a stranger, and Ben was far from afraid. The emotion he was experiencing was something else entirely.

"What are you going to do, Adam?" he asked sadly. "You want to hit me again? Go ahead. See if it makes you feel better because, son, I really want to find something that is going to make you feel better. I want to fix the way those men, that woman, and this place have hurt you. I want to find a way to stop you from bleeding more than you already are."

"I'm not bleeding," Adam spat.

Carefully moving his hands, Ben placed them on the fresh, wetness which had emerged from beneath Adam's shirt to cling to the dark material; he pulled them away and lifted them high, his bloodstained fingertips hovering between their respective faces. "Yes," he said. "You are, and you have been for a while. I'm sorry I couldn't see it before. I'm sorry that my previous questions prevented me from helping you, but, son, please answer the ones I'm asking now so that I can help you."

Adam studied the blood on Ben's hands, looking upon it as though he couldn't understand how it had appeared. Then all at once, the truth seemed to wash over him, and his demeanor shifted in an instant. Letting go of his father, he took a step back, peering down at his soggy shirt with horror in his eyes. "No," he whispered. "No. No. No. No. NO!"

Ben didn't know what was happening. He didn't understand what had changed. Why the blood clinging to his son's shirt was suddenly such a bothersome thing. It had always been horrific—he knew that—but why was his son reacting as though he was just remembering this very glaring fact? Adam's legs swayed, his body trembling as his knees buckled. The only thing that prevented him from falling on the ground was his father's close proximity and foresight.

"What is it?" Ben asked, the words breathless and insistent, his hands lodged beneath Adam's armpits, holding him upright. "What is wrong?"

"She's going to come back now," Adam whispered. "Oh, god, you don't want to be here when She comes back. You don't want to see—you don't want to know the things She's going to do to me."

He lifted his hands, seemingly intent on raking them through his hair, only to hold them directly in front of his face, his eyes widening and gleaming with sheer terror.

"Oh, Pa," he gasped, and Ben swore he was witnessing his son's last remaining string of sanity snap and break. It took what varying composure Adam had manage to maintain with it, what little was left of his resolve not to speak of things he previously fought to leave unsaid. "You have no idea the terrible things I've done," he added brokenly. "The terrible things I've let her do to me. You wouldn't try to save me if you knew the truth. Nobody would."

"It's okay," Ben tried to soothe.

"No, it's not. I-I…hit Joe, and when he hit me back, I hit him again."

"I know, Adam, I saw."

"You didn't see. You don't know because you weren't there." Adam's tone was insistent now, bordering on hysterical. Still, his eyes remained wide, horrified, but dry. "I hit him in the thoroughfare, and then later I left the room. The town was abandoned when we came here and then it wasn't. The cattle were gone, but She was here. She took me by the hand, and She led me to a place I didn't want to go. I-I wasn't like you. I didn't have a choice to walk away from this place or stay. That was a luxury I gave up when I hurt Joe."

"You didn't hurt him," Ben tried. "Not really."

"Yes, I did. I hit him. He pushed me and I hit him. I chose to fight when I should have walked away."

"And where would you have gone? The thoroughfare was rife with cattle, Adam; there was nowhere for you to go."

"I should have been smart enough to figure it out. That's what I'm supposed to do, isn't it? Who I'm supposed to be? The intelligent one; the reasonable, collected one. If Joe chooses to act like a firecracker begging to be lit, I'm not supposed to hand him a matchstick."

"But you didn't."

"I did," Adam said. "I hit him—"

"Stop," Ben commanded, "saying that."

He was desperate for his son to volunteer any information outside of the thing he seemed intent on repeating, this frantic bid for his father to somehow understand the intensity of his guilt and pain associated with a simple fight between brothers. Ben found that he could not understand. It was a shameful thing to raise a fist and strike a brother, to knock him out and break his nose, but it didn't warrant this level of contrition or agony. If he didn't know his oldest son better—or maybe it was because he really did—Ben could have been led to believe that Adam was trying to confess to rendering the beating which had almost killed his baby brother rather than the disagreement Ben had been shown, a moment of time which had begun in the cattle-crowded thoroughfare and ended in the room where Adam had left his unconscious brother behind.

"I saw you hit your brother," Ben said. "I saw him shove you; and I know about the fight that ensued. I watched you leave the room. You didn't really hurt your brother; you weren't the one who tried to kill him, I know that."

"You know nothing," Adam whispered.

"Then tell me something."

"I can't."

Exhaling a taxed breath, Ben almost swore. Already they were back to this, an obscene tug-of-war over information. "Yes, you can," he said, forcing his voice to remain calm and his hands, which still rested beneath his son's armpits, to remain gentle.

If they had been captive to any other threatening circumstance in which Adam was allowing his contriteness to render him this determined to remain tight-lipped, Ben might have slapped him. He might have shaken him until the fear in his eyes faded and he got his head in the game. Because wasn't that what this all was? Some kind of twisted game for the entertainment and benefit of the midwife, the elders, and the abandoned town itself. The midwife wanted—needed—blood, and the elders needed her, but what did the town need to sustain itself? Seemingly abandoned for decades, it should have been reclaimed by the wilderness surrounding it years ago; there was no logical reason for it to still exist. But it did.

"No, I can't," Adam whispered.

"Yes, you can."

"No, I can't."

"Yes, you can."

"No, Ican't, and why would you even want me to? You saw; you know. I hit Joe and then I left the room. There was no one else there. No one else who could have come and then gone. I hit Joe and then I left him. I'm the one who hurt him. I'm the one who…" Hesitating, Adam closed his mouth and shook his head in an overwhelmed manner.

Ben tilted his head, a strange feeling gathering in the pit of his stomach as he finally heard and thought he understood what his son was trying to say—what Adam had always been trying to say.

Sitting behind the bars of the jail cell, Adam's silence had been a declaration of something that was only destined to become clear much later. When Ben asked what had happened, when he had ordered his son to tell the truth, Adam had chosen silence. He had not defended himself against the elders' accusations. He had not disputed the story his father had been told. Later, the midwife would tell Ben he couldn't pick and choose details; he needed to see the whole picture. In this moment, his sturdy hands still holding his son upright, Ben thought that the true picture was beginning to emerge and if he needed to see it, then maybe Adam needed to see it, too.

"You hit your brother in the thoroughfare," Ben repeated slowly, his recognition coming quickly. "He shoved you, you hit him, and when he hit you back, you hit him again. You broke his nose and you knocked him out, and then you took him to that dusty, upstairs room and you looked after him for a while. He didn't wake up when you were there because you left the room. You don't know what happened to him after that, do you? Because, like me, when you walked through that doorway, you weren't allowed to go back. You didn't see him again, so how would you know his state of injury had changed? How could you know the difference between the injuries you caused and the ones that almost killed him? You only know what you were told, and what you were told was that you hurt him."

"I did hurt him."

"No, well, yes. You hit him, but you didn't try to kill him."

"Yes, I did!"

"Adam, you didn't."

"But I did!"

"But you didn't."

"But I did. You think you know things. Well, I know things, too. I know I hit him; I know I never saw him wake up; I know I left the room; and I know…what I did to make sure he didn't die. I couldn't let him die. I couldn't live knowing that I was the one who caused it."

"And I know you didn't try to kill him; I've always known that. Adam, you don't know what really happened to Joe because you left the room, and he doesn't know what really happened to him either, because he's confused. His memories are muddled, all mixed up because he got hit in the head and was unconscious for so long. You don't know what happened to him; you only know what happened to you. Oh, lord, all this time, I thought you weren't answering my questions, that you weren't sharing the truth because you were being purposely obtuse, but you weren't. You didn't answer because you couldn't share what you didn't know, and you didn't want to share what you thought you did."

"No, that's not it. That's not true. I do know what happened to Joe because I hit him. I broke his nose. I knocked him out—"

"But you didn't see him again after you left the room, so you don't know that the injuries your brother presented after the fact were not caused by you."

"But I hit—"

"Hit, yes, try to kill, no. Oh, Adam, can't you see? Don't you know? There is something about this place that is inherently wrong. Those men, they will show you things that seem true because in a way they are. They take a sliver of truth, exploit and twist it so it could so easily resemble something else. Then they try to leave you with no other choice but to believe that the moment was something entirely different than what it actually was. You received a second telegraph, but that wasn't what led you here. You and Joe fought but that fight wasn't what nearly killed him. You left that room, and, like me, you weren't allowed to go back."

Ben smiled, relief clouding his features as he pulled his son into an exuberant embrace. Adam was not one for hugging; he never had been, and this occasion was no different. Arms hanging limply at his sides, he stood despondently in his father's arms.

Over his son's shoulder, Ben had a direct view of the door on the jailhouse. He thought about the moment that was lingering behind it; the things the midwife had said. She had once told him not to ask how and where, when, and why, rules that Adam had once strictly adhered to—rules that for whatever reason had suddenly been cast aside to allow him to ask questions and speak freely. He thought about what Adam believed he had done, what he himself had never allowed himself to, and what it all meant for them now.

"I am such a fool," he whispered, his lips close to his son's ear. "And you, my beautiful, brilliant, brave boy, you're a fool, too. You didn't try to kill your brother. Never for a second have I ever believed you did."

"This place doesn't care what you believe," Adam said quietly as he pulled out of the embrace.

"I know." Ben looked between his son and the door, his brow furrowing with a new thought. "But I think it might care what you do. Think about it, Adam. I understand why the elders tried to mislead me, but why have they misled you?"

"You're not allowed to ask why."

"I know, but we're going to anyway." Ben looked at Adam seriously. "And we're going to do something else." Offering up his hand, he waited patiently as his son appraised it in a confused manner, before finally deciding to take it in his own. Ben did not speak again until Adam looked at him. "You and I are going to walk through the jailhouse door."

Adam's eyes widened with terror as his father began leading him back up the thoroughfare. "No," he said.

"Yes," Ben said. "We have to."

"No, we don't!"

"Yes, we do."

"I don't want to!"

"I don't want to either, but it's exactly what we're going to do. The midwife said that the truth lay behind it, the pure, unadulterated truth. You have to see it, Adam; you have to know that you didn't hurt your brother."

If pressed to explain why such a thing was suddenly so important, Ben was not sure he could have. He knew Adam needed to know the truth. If not to somehow alter their current circumstances, then at least to comfort his son's guilt and internal angst. To give Adam the courage to finally remember who he was, so he could finally resemble the man his father knew him to be.

Adam fought him every step of the way. Fear etched into his features, he dug his heels into the ground and tugged on his father's hand, violently attempting to break free from his grasp. Ben held tight, only letting go to hold Adam's shoulders firmly, rooting him in place as they stood in front of the door.

"I'm sorry, I didn't listen," he said. "I'm sorry I didn't trust you enough to heed your warning and listen to the things you were trying to say. I know I don't have any real right to, but, son, I am asking you to trust me. I know you don't want to go through this door because you're afraid of seeing what you've been led to believe really happened. But you can't hang on to that fear, not here, not now. Here and now, you need to trust me when I say that no matter what moments linger behind this door, no matter what we are shown, it's going to be okay. I am with you now, so it's all going to be okay. I will find a way to fix all of this."

"What if you can't," Adam asked.

"I can."

"But what if you can't?"

Ben shook his head. "Not what, son," he gently reminded. Hands falling away from Adam's shoulders, he extended one of them in offering. "A question like that isn't going to lead us where we want to go."

Adam looked at the doorway, then at Ben's hand, then at the doorway, and then at Ben's hand again. He was obviously considering something, contrasting his father's reassurances to his fears and doubts. Ben cared little about his son's blatant distrust; his long moments of hesitation were nothing in comparison to what he eventually did.

Taking hold of his father's hand, Adam allowed himself to be led through the doorway.

TBC