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CHAPTER 18 - THE CONFESSION

We acknowledge our faults in order to repair by our sincerity the damage we have done us in the eyes of others.
~ Rochefoucauld 1665

Scott laughed and grabbed his younger brother in a bear hug worthy of their father, then dragged the weary traveler over the threshold and inside. Murdoch was there immediately, greeting Johnny effusively, his eyes suspiciously damp. Maria heard the commotion and rushed out to welcome Johnny back as well.

Once Johnny was seated with a glass of lemonade at his elbow, and Maria had gone back to the kitchen and left the men alone to talk, he heaved a sigh of relief. He was more than glad to be sitting in his favorite chair in the great room, and enjoyed feeling right at home. "I've had enough travel to last a lifetime," Johnny declared.

"Well, it's good to have you here, son," Murdoch said. "This certainly is unexpected. We were hoping you might find the time to come home for Christmas. Well, now you'll be here for your birthday. The humidity in Louisiana must be hard to take at this time of year, especially if you're not used to it."

Scott asked him something about New Orleans, but Johnny wasn't listening. He held up his hands to stop the flow of questions. "Look, I need to say somethin' and it ain't easy."

"Of course, son." Murdoch's brow furrowed in concern.

Scott had noticed that Johnny was back to wearing his gun belt around his hips, and that the dark-haired man's right hand occasionally strayed to the leather holster, as if he was touching a talisman. He doubted that Johnny even knew he was doing it. Scott assured his brother, "Take your time. We're not going anywhere."

Once Johnny had their full attention, and their eyes were looking at him expectantly, he felt like bolting for the door. Instead, he steeled himself and jumped right in. "First off, I've left New Orleans and I don't plan to go back there." Both Scott and Murdoch were obviously trying to keep their expressions neutral, but both were failing.

Murdoch uncrossed his legs and leaned forward. "What's going on, son? "

Johnny knew he was going to let them down when they heard the whole story and he dreaded telling it. "Things have changed," he warned. They were going to be a hell of a lot more shocked, and more than a little disappointed in him, after they heard what he had to say.

"First of all, Scott, I took your advice," Johnny began. "When I left here back in March I went straight to Natalie and we had a long talk. We came to a conclusion, but not the one either of you would expect." They were looking at him expectantly and Johnny didn't want to let them down. God, this was hard. "You see, Natalie and I, we haven't been. . . living as man and wife. . . for some time." Just say it, spit it out, he thought. "When I was here, recuperating, her lawyer sent me the divorce papers. When I didn't respond the way she wanted me to, her lawyer, that Pierson fellow, came here."

"So it wasn't about your business," said Scott. He didn't seem overly surprised.

Johnny shrugged apologetically. "I didn't want anyone to know how bad it was between me and Natalie, but now there's no more hiding it. We are now officially divorced," he said with more than a trace of bitterness.

Murdoch said, "Oh no, Johnny," as if he'd just been told of the death of an old friend. It was then that he noticed that Johnny was no longer wearing his gold wedding band, and that struck him harder than Johnny's admission that he had divorced his wife.

Johnny was afraid that if hesitated too long he'd never get it all out. "Things have been in limbo with us for so long I guess I got used to it." He ran a hand over his jaw. "I kept myself busy with work, and the thing of it is that the worse it got between us, the better my business got. It grew really fast, and. . .well, the bottom line is I just sold the business to give her what she wanted."

"You sold your business?" Murdoch asked as he tried to take it all in.

Johnny nodded. "Yeah, to Levi Leeds and his new business partner, a man who was one of my rivals, an importer down there. Lock, stock and barrel."

Scott stood without meaning to. The whole world seemed to be turned upside down, and he was having a hard time taking Johnny's story in. He didn't understand. Johnny seemed to be more concerned with his business than with his wife. Surely he could have done something, anything to keep his marriage intact. "Did you try with her? I mean really try?"

"Scott," Murdoch warned.

"It's okay," Johnny assured his father. To Scott he said, "I did try. Nobody'll ever know how much effort I put into it. We had something in the beginning, and it burned bright, but. . . something happened." He motioned for Scott to sit down. "You see, soon after we were first married, Natalie was expecting our baby." Johnny watched his father's face fall, and saw Scott's expression was of dawning horror as the meaning of his words became clear.

Scott sank into his chair as if his knees were weak. He mouthed the word, "No. No, Johnny."

Johnny looked at his hands rather than at their faces and said quietly, "She lost the baby, and she was sickly for a time. Later on, when she got better, I thought everything was back to normal, but Natalie didn't want anything to do with me. I tried everything, everything I could to make things right. I was patient and I did whatever she asked of me. But it was like she was a different person. No matter what I did. . ." He got up abruptly and poured himself a whisky before settling back in his chair. Neither Scott nor his father had taken their eyes off him, and he colored under their scrutiny.

"I went away on business, felt guilty for being away, came back to a wife who didn't want me there, got angry and left again. We went on like that for. . .for years." Saying it aloud hurt Johnny more than he could say, but he owed his family the truth. "At the beginning of this year, after being away for a couple of months, I went back, trying one more time even though I knew it was hopeless. That's when she shot at me." Johnny patted his hip, where his gun belt lay, and looked up to make sure that Murdoch understood. "I didn't know which way to go, so I came back here."

"I'm glad you came here, Johnny," Murdoch said. He shuddered inwardly to think of how different things might have been if his younger son, when hurting, had not come home. Johnny could have had the bullet fragments removed in some faraway place and then lost the use of his legs. He would have been all alone somewhere, suffering among strangers. And the proud, hopelessly stubborn young man never would have told them about it. Murdoch knew that for sure.

But for Johnny to conceal all of this trouble with Natalie from his own family - it was hard to take it all in. Murdoch had thought, right from the start, that the girl was flighty. What else could you expect from the daughter of Warburton? Murdoch swallowed his angry feelings and said evenly, "You always have a home here, and you remember that, son."

Johnny nodded his appreciation, but he caught a glimpse of Murdoch's inner thoughts in his cool gray eyes and so was not deceived by his father's calm demeanor. "I don't want you to blame Natalie. I pushed her too hard and didn't want to listen when she accused me of chasing an empty dream." He almost laughed at hearing himself defend her, after what she did. But then he remembered their first year together and the tragedy that had fallen upon them, and any fight left in him just melted away. "Maybe if. . . when we were first married, if the baby had lived. . ." Johnny bowed his head. He covered his mouth with his palm, unable to continue. There was a comforting hand on his shoulder. He didn't have to look up to know it was Scott.

Murdoch looked away and took a ragged breath; after a few minutes he recovered. "I'm so sorry for both of you, son."

"You never said anything, Johnny," Scott gently admonished. "You should have told us."

Johnny shook his head. He knew his brother was referring to the loss of the baby. "I couldn't." He whispered, "I couldn't, Scott. She didn't want anyone to know. After some time, I was going to tell you, but then Jenny died. I didn't want to burden you, not with everything you were going through. I think I sorta buried the memory of losing the baby, and now after four years it's almost like it happened to someone else." He looked up at Scott. "You know when it finally sank in that I'd lost any chance of reconciliation with my wife? When I knew it wouldn't work?"

Scott guessed, "That night you were in pain and took too much medication?"

"No. 'Course getting that letter from her when I was lying there crippled didn't help much. No, it was long before that. That night I killed Hal Granger, when you and I got back home? You stood there in the hallway and told me that Teresa said that I didn't belong to Lancer any more. I thought about it, but she was wrong. See, I feel right at home here at Lancer, more than anywhere else in the world. Here, not at the house that I built with my own hands in Frisco. I put my heart into building that place for Natalie and me, but wanting it to be a home did not make it so. Even though I don't regret leaving Lancer to build my own business, to find my own way, I know it's not where my future lies."

"Do you know where it does lie?" asked Scott, taking his seat again.

"Still working on that part of it," Johnny shook his head unhappily. "I sold the Frisco property as part of her settlement."

Murdoch asked cautiously, "Where is she now?"

Johnny said, his voice roughened by anger, "Natalie has divested herself of everything to do with me - my name, my house, my business - but not my money. She went back East, where she has friends, she says, and she's gonna make a fresh start." He let out a big breath and sagged in the chair. "Except for Santiago, all I have to my name is twenty dollars." Johnny leaned to one side and pulled a gold coin from his pants pocket. He held it up and looked at it with a crooked smile. "You gave this to me the first day we got here, remember?"

Scott chuckled and said, "Guest money." The brothers smiled at each other and Scott pointed out, "But you aren't a guest, Johnny. You're family."

Murdoch nodded. "You stay as long as you like, son."

After a quiet dinner, Johnny went out for a walk. Although he wandered over to the bunkhouse and talked to the men for a while, he really just needed some time to think. He didn't return until late, and told his father, who was doing bookkeeping, "I'm beat. Gonna turn in early."

Murdoch said good night and watched his younger son leave the room. He was concerned for Johnny, more so than usual, he realized. It bothered him quite a bit that Johnny had basically been living a lie for several years, and as a father, he thought he should have known the truth. He should have seen it, even if Johnny hadn't been willing to tell him what was going on. Johnny had concealed his personal troubles from the family, just like the way he had hidden that wound on his hip – and the operation on his back.

Then, on retrospect, Murdoch admitted to himself that, as a youth, he had certainly not told his own father the entire truth on several occasions. What young man does lay himself bare, after all? Maybe it was easier if a parent didn't know some things; a father was less likely to stick his nose in where it didn't belong. But Murdoch liked to know the facts so he could understand the situation and help his children out when they were too stubborn to ask for help.

He slammed the large ledger closed, more than annoyed with himself; he had never seen the signs. Apparently even Scott had not known what was going on, which was a surprise. Johnny didn't need have broadcasted it, but some hint would have been good – that he needed support or perhaps advice, or even a shoulder to lean upon. But when did Johnny ever ask straight out for help? There had been many a time when Murdoch had found it necessary to guess or pry out information from his son.

Well, Johnny was a man now, almost thirty years of age, and every man has bumps in the road to contend with. Maybe it was right that he dealt with his problems on his own, Murdoch didn't know. He did know, however, what it was like to lose a wife, two in fact, and now both of his sons had suffered great losses that he could empathize with.

When Johnny had left Lancer along with his new bride, he had borrowed a large sum from the ranch, as seed money for his business. He had paid it back within a surprisingly short amount of time and had shown a good head for business. Murdoch wondered why Johnny appeared to be in total control of one part of his life but not in the other, but then the image of Maria came to mind.

His second wife had been Murdoch's failure. He had never had any kind of control over her, even though she had been the love of his life. Catherine had been a wonderful wife, steadfast, loving and true. But Maria, well, Maria had been mercurial and intense and he had loved her in a possessive and self-destructive way. It was destined not to work out from the moment they had met, if one believed in such things as fate.

But then, in a moment of clarity, Murdoch understood what Johnny had been trying to do, and what Johnny probably wasn't even aware of. Johnny had set out to ensure that he never repeated the mistakes of his parents. His son had been determined to make himself a happy home in which he could cherish his wife and nurture his children, just as all men set out to do when they are first married. But Johnny had more to overcome than most. As the product of a terribly unhappy marriage, having been stolen away from his home and his father as a baby, and then deprived, abused and abandoned as a child, he had taken up the gun and accepted a dangerous way of life as the norm. But once he was an adult, Johnny turned everything that was bad in his life into a lesson to be learned and avoided. He had set out to accomplish what his own father had not been able to do - to keep his marriage intact, no matter what.

Whether or not Johnny's choice of Natalie for a wife was a mistake didn't matter any more. It was done with, and apparently he was moving on. Sighing, Murdoch turned out the lamps and went up to bed, wondering how long Johnny would remain at Lancer - this time. He reluctantly laid a wager with himself, a twenty dollar gold coin, that his son would be gone within the month.

Scott always made sure that everything around the hacienda was secure before he turned in. It was quite late by the time he had completed his rounds. On his way to bed, he walked past Johnny's room and was surprised to see a light shining from underneath the door. He hesitated, not wanting to intrude even if he was hopeful that his brother might want to talk to him. But as he passed on by, Scott stepped on a creaky floorboard. He heard the squeak of bedsprings and the sound of bare feet padding across floor towards the door.

Scott halted and turned just as Johnny opened his door wide. Johnny shifted his weight, scratched his head and asked, "Want to come in?"

"Sure," Scott replied. Johnny was wearing only his long john bottoms, and when he returned to his bed, Scott could see the scars on his brother's back. There were several old, pale marks but it was the most recent one that stood out - the incision made by Sam's scalpel where he had gone seeking the bits of lead in Johnny's lower back. The scar started just above the waistband of the long johns and extended diagonally for several inches towards his spine.

Johnny glanced over his shoulder as he fell onto his bed and although he saw Scott's stare, he ignored it. "Sit on the bed," he invited, plumping up a pillow for his brother to lean against.

Scott removed his boots and sat up against the heavy wooden headboard. "Does your back bother you at all?"

"It's sort of sensitive." Johnny shrugged. "It's better than not being able to feel anything at all, I can tell you." He pushed himself back against the headboard, then winced. "Damn." He reached behind him to pull out a small book. "Twain," Johnny explained. "I'm trying to give up smoking and can't sleep, so I read."

Scott looked sideways at his brother. He didn't have the appearance of a man pining away due to the end of his marriage, but sometimes it was hard to tell what Johnny was feeling. Usually quiet meant sad, but apart from his brief show of emotion down in the great room earlier, Johnny was acting as if there had been no major changes in his life. Scott dared to ask, "Why didn't you tell us? Tell me the whole story?" He was put out that he hadn't been confided in, and it showed in his voice.

Opening the book, Johnny absently leafed through the title pages. "Did you know that Twain said that it's better to keep your mouth shut and look dumb, than to open it and look worse than dumb."

Scott looked at Johnny to see if he was serious or not. "You're too smart to believe that. After everything we've shared since you came here in the spring, I'd have thought you could confide in me."

"Oh hell, Scott. I didn't want to hide any of it from you, but I never found the right time. There's something else. . . I couldn't tell you in front of Murdoch, earlier, but my. . .Natalie. . .She married me thinking I was this gunfighter, some romantic character. Kindred spirits is what she called us. She expected someone who'd take her on adventures and be like her father. We did take some trips early on, but I wanted to settle down, start our family. I was working all hours, too."

Johnny placed the open book face down on his bare stomach and turned his head to look at Scott. There were some things he would never reveal, certainly not to his father. But Scott deserved to see more of the picture, and even if it was going to hurt a lot to actually say the words aloud, and would not be pleasant to hear, the time had come.

When Johnny spoke, his voice was low. "We had trouble right from the start. Losing the baby was real hard, and we were both hurting so bad. But if we'd had children, who's to say if they would have brought us closer together? I wanted to try for another child, but she said no. She wouldn't budge. We sorta drifted apart, but I always tried to be what she wanted me to be, in the hope it would make a difference. I made time for her, as much as I could. We made friends with other couples, went to parties, all sorts of fun things. Then, a couple of years ago, I got home to find she'd. . ." Johnny's gaze dropped, then he looked at Scott defiantly and said in a rough voice, raw with emotion, "I found out she'd been stepping out with a man, a friend of ours, someone I trusted."

Troubled, feeling his brother's deep pain, Scott waited to hear the rest. But the blue eyes turned away and Johnny didn't continue, so Scott said, "I'm sorry-."

Johnny shook his head, refusing any sympathy. Even so, he said with barely contained anger, "She cheated on me, and I forgave her. I damn well forgave her and tried to be her husband again. It was no use, but I was just too dumb to see there was no hope for us." He took a deep breath and turned back to face his brother. "I almost killed the man. Anyway, Natalie and I grew apart, and weeks became months and next thing I know, we're coming up on our fifth anniversary and I hadn't talked to my own wife for…I don't know…for weeks. That's when I confronted her and told her we were going to make it work. One last chance. I worked damned hard to build us a decent life together and I didn't want to let it all go down the drain. I told her she was gonna act like my wife and she was comin' to Lancer with me for a visit. Being. . . forceful is what got me shot." He lowered his gaze and said quietly, "I know that losing the baby so early on in our marriage was the turning point for her, and maybe we never had a chance after that. We started out all fired up for each other, but like Murdoch once said, 'today's fire is tomorrow's charcoal.'"

"But you tried, Johnny. That's important to remember. I know you. You put your heart and soul into everything you do. You did your best."

"I failed!" Johnny said the word 'failed' like it was wrenched from his mouth. He slumped down in his bed and stared at the ceiling. "We were so excited about having children. . .I remember how we couldn't wait to tell Murdoch," he said wistfully. "I never got the chance." His lower lip began to tremble and he rolled on his side, away from his brother. "Why?" he choked out in a husky tone. "I wanted that baby so much."

Scott looked at Johnny's bare back, seeing more than the scars: the puckered hole where Pardee's bullet had hit him all those years ago crossed by the incision Murdoch had made to extract it - he'd done the operation right on the kitchen table. There was the recent, raised pink line with bumps on either side made by Sam's neat stitches after the bullet fragments had been cut out, and all the other marks that told their own appalling tales of injury and pain. But the worst hurt of all bore no visible scar. It could only be seen in the shaking of Johnny's shoulders as he cried for the child he never had. . .and for all that he, and Tallie, had lost. When Scott pulled a blanket up to cover Johnny, his brother reached back to hang onto his hand.

Scott said softly, "It's all right, Johnny. You're here with us now, for as long as you need us. I'm right here. Not going anywhere." He consoled him as best he could and eventually, when Johnny finally appeared to fall asleep, Scott turned down the lamp and left for his own room.

***–***TBC one chapter left...